








W 



<V 



* ^ G ° visit °- / . 

Aq. -s^MmM* x°-A 



*S y V - 



4 o 

•0? %<> 



^6^ 



£°* 



JP^* 



vT 1 b 



bv 1 










"°* 



V 






° «° % <> 



'9* * 






A 



,0 




<J\ 










W r'^ 



A WOMAN 
AND THE WAR 



BY 

THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK 

AUTHOR OF 

"WARWICK CASTLE AND ITS EARLS," "AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH ARCH," 

"AN OLD ENGLISH GARDEN" 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



;D523 
.W36 



COPTRIGHT, 1916, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



4>'y2Z 



NOV 23 1916 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



ICI.A445760 



PREFACE 

It is not without serious reflection that I have col- 
lected these thoughts in war time to offer in book 
form to those who may care to read and ponder 
them. They were written for the most part on the 
spur of vital moments, when some of the tendencies 
of the evil times through which we are living 
seemed to call for immediate protest. I have felt 
more strongly than ever in the past two years that 
we are in danger of accepting as something out- 
side the pale of criticism the judgments of those 
who lead, and sometimes mislead us. The support 
or hostility of the newspaper press — in some as- 
pects the greatest distorting medium in the world 
— is still ruled by party considerations. Loyalty 
or ill-will to the men in office colours all the views 
of those who praise or blame, and it happens often 
that a good measure is damned for what is best or 
lauded for what is worst in it. Again, I have felt 
that while much of the fighting spirit of the coun- 
try is subject to army discipline, the tendency of 
government has been to make helpless puppets of 



iv PREFACE 

the citizens who remain behind the forces in the 
field. In the near future, if we would save what 
is left of our heritage of freedom, and would even 
extend the comparatively narrow boundaries that 
existed before the autumn of 1914, we must re- 
lieve the press of the self -conferred duty of think- 
ing for us. We must not give our rulers a blank 
cheque; their best efforts tend more to rouse our 
suspicions than to compel our confidence. 

Judging all the matters dealt with in these pages 
as fairly and honestly as I can, I have found my- 
self repeatedly in opposition to the authorities. 
The legislation from which we have suffered since 
war began, the efforts to relieve difficult situa- 
tions and prepare for obvious emergencies have 
savoured largely of panic and can boast no more 
than a small element of statesmanship. So I have 
protested and the protests have grown even beyond 
the limit of these book covers, while an ever-swelling 
letter-bag has told me that I have interpreted, 
however feebly, the thoughts, wishes, and aspira- 
tions of many thinking men and women. We are 
on the eve of events that will demand of evolution 
that it mend its paces or become revolution with- 
out more ado. The international crisis and the na- 
tional makeshifts must have proved to the dullest 
that the world is out of joint. 



PREFACE v 

I make no claim to traverse the whole ground, 
modesty forbids, and Mr. Zangwill has accom- 
plished the task in his "War for the World," the 
most brilliant work that has seen the light since 
August, 1914. I have sought to point out where 
and why and how we are moving backwards. I 
can command no eloquence to gild my words, I can- 
not pretend to have more to say than will have oc- 
curred to every man and woman of advanced views 
and normal intelligence, but it does not suffice to 
think; one must make thought the prelude of ac- 
tion. Strong in this belief I have not hesitated to 
attempt something more than mere criticism. I 
cannot wave flags, abuse enemies, or extol popular 
idols; and consequently those who read will please 
accept these and other limitations. 



FRANCES EVELYN WARWICK. 



Waewick Castle, 

August, 1916. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I King Edward and the Kaiser 1 

II The Greatest Fight op All 15 

III England's Drink Legislation 24 

IV War and Marriage 33 

V Nursing in War Time 40 

VI Two Years op War — Woman's Loss and Gain 49 

VII Child Labour on the Land 56 

VIII Comrades 64 

IX The Curse op Autocracy 72 

X Woman's War Work on the Land .... 85 

XI German Women and Militarism 101 

XII Youth in the Shambles 114 

XIII Thoughts on Compulsion 124 

XIV Women and War 133 

XV Race Suicide 142 

XVI The Lesson op the Picture Theatre . . . 158 

XVII Truth will out 166 

XVIII The Claim op All the Children 175 

XIX The Prussian in Our Midst 189 

XX The Grown-Up GntLS op England .... 197 

XXI The Social Horizon 205 

XXII How Shall We Minister to a World Diseased? 215 

XXIII How I Would Work for Peace 224 

XXIV Lord French 234 

XXV Lord Haldane: Some Recollections and an 

Estimate 243 

XXVI Grounds por Optimism 250 

XXVII Anglo-American Relations in Peace and War 258 



A WOMAN 
AND THE WAR 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 

Since the war began I have read numerous ex- 
tracts from the press of Germany and from the 
contributions of German writers to American pa- 
pers stating in the most unequivocal terms that 
the late King Edward devoted his political sagacity 
to the task of isolating Germany, that he promoted 
alliances to that end, and that he deliberately 
sought to compass the destruction of the German 
Empire. 

At first I took these remarks to be no more than 
the rather unfortunate outpourings of the unin- 
formed, but I have seen of late that they have been 
repeated with great insistence until there is a dan- 
ger that they will become an article of faith, not 
alone in Germany but in other countries where 
Germans have a sympathetic following. I do not 
choose as a rule to discuss questions of this kind, 



2 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

I prefer to leave popular error to correct itself, 
but, having enjoyed the confidence of King Ed- 
ward before and after he came to the throne, hav- 
ing heard from his own lips scores of times his 
attitude towards Germany and the Germans, it 
seems to be a duty to set out the plain truth. I 
will do so in the endeavour to sweep away one of 
the most ridiculous and mischievous conceptions 
engendered by the present evil condition of things. 

Had I ever imagined that the present crisis, or, 
for that matter, any political development of the 
peaceful kind would have led to the statements I 
seek to refute, how easy it would have been to 
jot down the purport of conversations in which 
high policy was discussed! Fortunately, I have 
an excellent memory and it is reinforced by letters 
to which I have access, and I hope to commit the 
reports that have been spread abroad to the ob- 
livion that is their proper place. I can vouch for 
the absolute truth of all I have to say, and I am 
writing with a full sense of responsibility. 

In the first place the intimate relations between 
the English and German courts should be remem- 
bered; one of my earliest recollections is of being 
taken to visit the old Empress Augusta at the Ger- 
man Embassy. This was when I was a child, and 
I know I went many times, so her visits would 
probably have been frequent. On my writing- 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 3 

table is the silver and mother-of-pearl ornament 
that was her wedding present to me. Everybody 
respected the old Emperor William, and every- 
body admired the Crown Prince Frederick. When 
he married Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, the 
Princess Royal, who became, after the death of 
Princess Alice, King Edward's favourite sister, 
the relations between the two courts could hardly 
have been more amicable. Queen Victoria loved 
Germany and the Germans, she adored her grand- 
son. In her eyes he could do no wrong, she even 
went so far as to hold him up to her eldest son 
as a model. On the other hand, the Princess of 
Wales, being a Dane, could not forget or forgive 
the theft of Schleswig Holstein ; her sister the Rus- 
sian Empress shared her suspicions of German in- 
tentions, but I never heard of one or the other origi- 
nating or encouraging anti-German intrigues. 

As the Kaiser grew up towards manhood his 
personality was hardly known; his father, the 
Crown Prince Frederick, a far more noble figure, 
monopolised attention. Beyond the fact that he 
was Queen Victoria's favourite grandson nothing 
was known about William II. Nobody thought 
that he would be called upon to rule before he 
was middle aged or elderly; his father's illness 
was unsuspected. But if there was no ill feeling 
at the English court, it is impossible to say the 



4 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

same of the court at Berlin. The presence of the 
Princess Royal was resented; many people be- 
lieved, or affected to believe, that the marriage had 
been designed to make Germany politically sub- 
servient to Great Britain. As everybody knows, 
these feelings grew apace as soon as the old Em- 
peror William had breathed his last, and when, a 
few months later, the Emperor Frederick passed 
away, the Anglophobia had spread throughout the 
Court circles and the young Kaiser had been 
tainted with the Court prejudice against his own 
mother. He did not treat her well; it is not too 
much to say that he treated her badly. She, nat- 
urally enough, complained to her brother, the 
Prince of Wales, — I have already said that she 
was now his best loved sister. He was angry on 
her account and spoke his mind. Relations be- 
tween the young Kaiser and his uncle were al- 
ready strained. I must turn back a little to ex- 
plain why. 

In the early days, when King Edward had ar- 
rived at man's estate and married, he sought to 
take a legitimate interest in state affairs. He was 
disposed to study and to learn, and sought, not 
without ample justification, to be admitted to the 
company of the little group of statesmen who ad- 
vised the Queen and ruled the Empire. But Queen 
Victoria would have none of it. She practically 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 5 

refused her son access to the Councils of State, 
she instructed her Ministers to keep all state pa- 
pers from him; within the compass of a limited 
monarchy she was determined to rule alone. 

Her eldest son, finding that he was not to be 
accepted as a worker, decided to amuse himself. 
If he could not direct public policy he would at 
least direct fashion, if he could not assist the For- 
eign Office he could at least enable English So- 
ciety to take rank among the smartest in Europe. 
So the Marlborough House set came into existence, 
and with its rise came the first beginnings of the 
Kaiser's criticism. There were two grounds for 
this. 

In the first place King Edward's personal popu- 
larity was unbounded; wherever he went he 
charmed women and men, and it was quite clear 
that he would be a force to be reckoned with in 
diplomacy, when in the fullness of time he ascended 
the throne; on the other hand, the Kaiser lacked 
all the qualities that his uncle possessed in abun- 
dance. Hard-working and conscientious, he was 
petulant, exacting, and uncertain. Naturally, 
then, he found matter for grievance against the 
uncle who, seemingly without effort, swayed opin- 
ion and enjoyed esteem. Jealousy was the origin 
of disagreement. 

There is another side to the antagonism. The 



6 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Kaiser was always a very strict-living, sober- 
minded man, a model husband and father, honestly 
representative of the domestic virtues in the high- 
est degree. King Edward, largely by force of 
circumstances, lived a life of gaiety and pleasure; 
whatever he did he did thoroughly; as it might 
not be work, it was play. He raced, yachted, shot, 
played cards, entertained, visited all his friends, 
and had a wide field of friendships. Though 
shrewd, worldly, and quick witted, he made certain 
mistakes, and these gave his nephew an oppor- 
tunity that was quickly taken. Perhaps the Kaiser 
would utter a criticism on the spur of the mo- 
ment, it would be taken up, magnified, polished, 
and brought over to King Edward in the finished 
and augmented state. By the way, I am refer- 
ring, unless I state the contrary, to the years when 
King Edward was Prince of Wales. I use his 
final title to cover all the years with which I am 
dealing. King Edward had great gifts, and when 
the time came to turn them to the best account, 
they were invaluable to his country but, as I have 
said, he was not infallible. He made mistakes. 
Tranby Croft provided one, his friendship for 
Baron Hirsch provided another; for the Baron, 
though he may have been a charming man — cer- 
tainly his wife was a charming woman and a dear 
friend of mine — was an unscrupulous financier 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 7 

who had accumulated a vast fortune by curious 
and unclean methods of which the full story can- 
not be told, and yet for all his faults, he was not 
an ignoble man, but in some phases of his complex 
nature an idealist and philanthropist. 

Berlin sneered at Baron Hirsch, Vienna was ac- 
tually shocked, for in the Dual Empire a man is 
judged by his quarterings, and even if he should 
have made a huge fortune honestly and lacks quar- 
terings he is less than the penniless, vicious, and 
brainless person of high descent. 

King Edward smiled at the rage and spite of 
Vienna and Berlin. He remarked to one of his 
intimates that he could not allow either capital to 
choose his friends for him, and in order that there 
might be no mistake about his intentions he ac- 
cepted an invitation from Baron Hirsch to shoot 
with him on his great estates at Eichorn. I don't 
know whether Baron Hirsch asked any Austrians 
or Germans, certainly none accepted the invitation, 
and King Edward found, much to his amusement, 
that all the other guests were Englishmen. He 
merely laughed, enjoyed his visit, and then, after 
it was over, visited the Baron in Paris, to the in- 
tense annoyance of the Jockey Club there. Per- 
haps it was not altogether wise to defy the con- 
ventions, but of course English Society has never 
been quite as exclusive as that of Berlin or Vienna. 



8 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

The Kaiser chafed at his uncle's association with 
a mushroom financier whose record was only too 
well known, he chafed too when King Edward 
spent long hours at Homburg with the Empress 
Frederick who had a castle there in the days of 
her widowhood. The love between the brother and 
sister was very beautiful. She confided all her 
troubles to him from the early days, for oddly 
enough when there were family quarrels Queen 
Victoria sided with her grandson against the Prin- 
cess Royal, but it is only right and fair to say 
that the Kaiser reciprocated her affection, and his 
grief when she passed away was heartfelt. The 
Homburg meetings were gall and wormwood to 
the Kaiser and they renewed the old fear of his 
uncle's popularity. When instead of going to 
Homburg in Germany, King Edward went to 
Marienbad in Austria there was still more uneasi- 
ness in Berlin's governing circles, for King Ed- 
ward's extraordinary personal magnetism was 
known and feared, he was credited with having 
the power if he chose to exercise it of seriously 
disturbing the foundations of the Triple Alliance. 
The Kaiser need not have been uneasy, his uncle 
did not enter into political conversations. 

It will be seen then that the disagreement be- 
tween uncle and nephew had been little more than 
a sort of family quarrel intensified by the high 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 9 

standing of both parties. I have heard King Ed- 
ward speak angrily of his nephew, but only be- 
cause of the way he treated his mother, the per- 
sonal gibes and criticisms did not often sting him, 
he merely said his nephew was suffering from 
megalomania and had not learned to control a 
rather unruly tongue. In all the years I have 
passed mentally in review I do not remember hear- 
ing King Edward utter a single sentence of ill-will 
to Germany. 

The Kaiser's visits to England in the earlier 
days have left no special impression upon my mem- 
ory. I remember dancing opposite to him in a 
quadrille at a Court Ball in Buckingham Palace 
and being present at a dinner-party given for 
him in a private house. His friends among the 
ladies of England were the wives of members of 
the Royal Yacht Squadron; among these was Lady 
Ormonde. She used to stay at Kiel for the yacht- 
ing festival, as guest of the Kaiser with her hus- 
band who was then Commodore of the R.Y.S. 

In all his criticisms King Edward was scrupu- 
lously fair. Even in discussing his sister's rela- 
tions with her son he would add that they were 
both strong personalities with different sympathies 
and view-points, and that sustained agreement be- 
tween them was probably impossible. He admired 
the Kaiserin frankly, as all must who know the 



10 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

gracious and kindly lady who in her own quiet and 
unobtrusive fashion has filled her life with good 
deeds. 

Relations between King Edward and his nephew 
improved immensely when Queen Victoria died. 
Not only did the Kaiser come over to the funeral, 
but he seemed on that occasion to have laid aside 
the brusqueness that had marked earlier visits. 
All the Court noticed it, and King Edward com- 
mented upon it to me with very evident pleasure. 
The process of improvement in relations started 
about 1899. Through the Boer War events had 
been moving towards a reconciliation. 

The Kaiser's correct behaviour during the war 
which his frenzied telegram on the occasion of the 
Raid had done something to bring about, placated 
King Edward, and after Queen Victoria's death 
relations between the two men improved sensibly. 
The Kaiser either limited his criticisms or saw 
to it that they were not indiscreetly uttered. The 
old friendliness was resumed, and things became 
as they were after the attempt on King Edward's 
life in Denmark when the Kaiser left Berlin and 
met the royal train at the frontier station to con- 
gratulate his uncle upon his escape and inquire 
after his health. King Edward wrote to me from 
Sandringham on his return. After thanking me 
for a letter and telegram of congratulations, he 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 11 

said that the Kaiser came all the way from Berlin 
to meet his train at Altona and inquire after his 
health. He thought that was very kind of the 
Kaiser. 

I remember that the Kaiser's later visits to Eng- 
land were quite a success. King Edward remarked 
to me, when his nephew was staying at Highcliffe 
in Hampshire for his health, how greatly he had 
improved in manner, how courteous and consid- 
erate he was, and how much of the old unrest and 
irritability seemed to have gone. Between King 
George, Queen Mary, and the Kaiser, relations 
could not have been more friendly, and when King 
Edward and Queen Alexandra went to Berlin he 
thoroughly enjoyed his visit, and told me as much 
on his return. 

How then, it may be asked, shall we account 
for the Anglo-French convention of 1904, and for 
the meeting between King Edward and the Tsar 
at Reval when the foundations of friendship be- 
tween England and Russia were laid? In Ger- 
many it is believed that these arrangements were 
aggressive in their intention and demonstrated 
King Edward's hostility. In both cases King Ed- 
ward, absolutely faithful to the Constitution, fol- 
lowed the advice of his ministers, and did not dis- 
cuss his personal predilections at all. After the 
Reval meeting I asked him his view of the political 



12 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

situation, and as far as my memory serves this is 
what he said: "Germany is our commercial rival, 
she has a magnificent business aptitude, she might 
develop with growing riches and a few adventurous 
statesmen a rivalry of another kind. The Reval 
meeting, with the French convention, will I hope 
put an end to the possibility. But nothing has 
been done that stands in the way of a good un- 
derstanding between London and Berlin. I be- 
lieve all sensible men desire peace. We have no 
quarrel with Germany or any other power." 

I may add that King Edward admired Germany 
almost as much as he loved France. The thorough- 
ness of the German business method, the rejection 
of everything slovenly in thought and action, im- 
pressed him greatly, and he once made a remark- 
able statement to me. It was in London in the 
late winter of 1909-10, a few months before he 
died. He came to tea and talked of German ad- 
ministration. "Do you know," he said, "that if 
this country could be controlled in the same way, 
we should be all the better for it? If we could 
be ruled by Germans just long enough to have 
our house put in order" — he paused, and added 
with a laugh — "You know the trouble is that if 
we once had them we could not get rid of them." 
This statement was made during our last conver- 
sation; I never saw King Edward again, but his 



KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 13 

words should be sufficient to show that he was 
not animated by an ill-feeling towards the Ger- 
man Empire. They are hardly the words of a man 
who plotted against the land ruled over by the 
son of the woman who was at once his favourite 
sister and most devoted friend. 

Age, and an experience of great affairs not to 
be excelled by any of his contemporaries, had made 
King Edward a sane and philosophic observer. 
He possessed very few prejudices, and he never 
allowed his feelings as a man to stand between 
him and his duties as a king. But if his personal 
views had affected political issues it would never 
have been to Germany's detriment, for every criti- 
cism that I heard him utter over a long period of 
years has been set out here. He had a real love 
for his French and Austrian friends and a quiet 
respect for his German acquaintances. I may add 
that King Edward not only hated war and would 
have been most reluctant to take any step that 
might ensue it, but he regarded people with belli- 
cose ideas as fit occupants of asylums. The fine 
fabric of civilisation impressed him, and he saw in 
war the blind force that would destroy it and leave 
the world laboriously and painfully to rebuild. 
His real interests lay in the direction of social re- 
form, and he even found the trappings of state, 
in which as a rule he took delight, a little heavy 



14 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

when he realised that they deprived him of the 
right of free speech enjoyed by the humblest citi- 
zen of the realm. He made it his business to know 
what Germany was doing to solve the problems of 
unemployment, housing, and factory management, 
and in the last years of his life his intercourse with 
Liberal statesmen quickened his interest in plans 
for the betterment of the class that does the work. 
Time out of mind he spoke of what Germany had 
achieved in this direction, always with the frank 
admiration that only a good sportsman can give 
under all circumstances. Far from seeking to bring 
war about, it is with me an article of faith that had 
he been living in July, 1914, there would have been 
no war. The immense personal influence he 
wielded would have been thrown into the scales on 
the side of peace, he would have reconciled dif- 
ferences at the eleventh hour for he was persona 
gratissima in every court of Europe, and there is 
not among the rulers of Europe one who would 
not have listened when he spoke. Those who sug- 
gest that he helped to build the pyre upon which 
the best and bravest of nearly all the nations of 
the world are now being consumed, do but slander 
the dead and testify to their own ignorance. 



II 

THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL 

In his famous essay on Mr. Montgomery's poems' 
Macaulay speaks of the degradation to which those 
must submit who are resolved to write when there 
are scarcely any who read. 

It seems a little idle to suggest that two years 
of war have availed to reduce readers to vanishing 
point; indeed, editors and publishers of daily and 
weekly papers testify to an increase of circulation. 
Paper is harder to obtain than readers; the cause 
of trouble is that the written word is all of one 
kind. The love of sensation, strongest amongst 
those whose mental equipment is of the slightest, 
is being sedulously catered for, the townsman re- 
quires tales of the slaughter of his enemies to give 
a flavour to his breakfast, his lunch, and his dinner. 

Even the countryman, who with no more than 
one newspaper in twenty-four hours must spread 
sensation over a day, seems to insist upon flam- 
boyant headlines and cheerful tales of slaughter. 
Mild-mannered folk, who would turn vegetarians 

rather than help to kill the meat that is set upon 

15 



16 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

their tables, may be heard enthusiastically calcu- 
lating the enemy's losses in terms of six or seven 
figures, and discussing the hairbreadth incidents 
of flood and field as though they themselves car- 
ried a more dangerous weapon than an umbrella 
and had faced more serious troubles in the normal 
day than an ill-cooked meal, an appointment lost, 
or a train missed. In short, people who must stay 
at home because they are no longer of fighting 
age, strength, or inclination, are being encouraged 
to act as the audience. Happily, perhaps, for 
them, they cannot see the actual performance, but 
they can hear about it, and, as a rule, they are 
told what their minds are best prepared to receive. 
Truth has received instructions to remain at the 
bottom of her well or risk court-martial. Life is 
reduced to its primitive elements ; war, while it dig- 
nifies many of those who take an active part in it, 
does little more than degrade the constant reader 
of papers of the baser and most popular kind. It 
is to be feared that the sane view of life is never 
the appealing one, the untrained eye can see trees 
but never a wood, and the man in the street is 
nearest to the editorial heart because his name 
is legion, and the advertiser says to him, as Ruth 
said to Naomi, "Whither thou goest, I will go." 
In the early nineties there was a literary move- 
ment of great promise in London; the Boer War 



THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL 17 

extinguished it; in the last half-dozen years we 
have seen a brisk effort towards the development 
of a national or even international social pro- 
gramme ; this war may set it back for a generation ; 
War is ever fatal to ideas. Men whose minds were 
being turned slowly and reluctantly to questions 
they had been educated to ignore are now con- 
cerned with two problems — winning the war and 
making good the injuries it has entailed. The in- 
creased taxation, the business losses, seemingly ir- 
recoverable, will develop a certain natural hard- 
ness of fibre, and there is a danger that the social 
movements, slow in times of prosperity, will halt 
in the times to come. 

The season of trouble for those "resolved to 
write" is upon the publicists of the social reform 
movement. They must be prepared for hard 
knocks and for all the arts of misrepresentation 
and vilification. The general reader will first de- 
nounce, then ignore and finally listen to the sur- 
vivors of the common-sense crusade. The people 
who start to state facts will be the leaders of a 
forlorn hope, and our brave fellow-countrymen did 
not face as great an odds in the retreat from Mons. 
A fight for the universal reduction of armaments 
and for the remodelling of the existing system of 
government will be met by indignant cries for con- 
scription and less freedom. The ubiquitous hand 



18 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

of the German will be traced in every line that 
pleads for toleration, good will, and the removal of 
all autocracies under whatever name; any sugges- 
tion of a return to Christian teaching will be de- 
nounced as the highest immorality. There are 
many who hold that a conscript Army and a larger 
Navy would have saved us from this war; they 
cannot see that we should have done no more than 
postpone the evil day until it dawned upon Eu- 
rope in a still greater magnitude of evil, if this be 
possible, and that our commercial class, impeded 
by forced service, would have been unable to pro- 
vide the means to pay the bill. The ulcer of Eu- 
ropean armament has burst at last, and the remedy 
proposed for the debilitated body of the Western 
World will be a still larger ulcer to take the place 
of the one that demanded so much labour to feed 
and so much life-blood to cleanse it. 

In the same way the effort to make democracy 
articulate, to raise the standard of the national 
intelligence, will be fiercely resisted by those who 
believe that the way of the world in the past must 
be the way of the world in the future. The at- 
tempt to improve upon the methods of our fathers 
is tolerated in the worlds of science, medicine, and 
commerce, the innate conservatism of government 
is sacrosanct. To educate millions of able-bodied 
men, not to the fighting pitch but beyond and 



THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL 19 

above it, will be denounced as high treason, and 
will be opposed by autocracies, bureaucracies, 
cannon-makers and publicans alike. A rise to the 
heights of sanity is, must be, the death of vested 
interests, and every force to the hands of author- 
ity will be employed to check the dreaded move- 
ment. According to a well-established formula, 
the method of attack will be to denounce very bit- 
terly suggestions that have never been put forward 
and principles that have no adherents. In this 
way issues can be confused and obscured. 

To be drunk with victory or dazed by defeat 
is to be particularly sensitive to the more brutal 
cries of war. The victor desires the full reward 
of good fortune, as Germany did in 1871 ; the van- 
quished nurses revenge, as France has done ever 
since the end of the struggle that found her so 
ill-prepared. Counsels of moderation are declared 
to be inadmissible until the status quo ante has 
been restored, and every force that makes for the 
spoliation of the simple by the worldly wise takes 
the field against common sense. The appeal of 
the dead is forgotten by all living save the woman 
whose mission it is to raise another generation for 
destruction; the lessons of history cannot be re- 
called by those who have never learned them. 

Against all the difficulties outlined here, and 
many another that need not be set down, a small 



20 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

body of men and women, inspired by a great ideal, 
must labour in every country that has seen war 
or even realised its significance. They must speak 
and write in the face of fierce opposition and 
contempt, for war has swept away many of the 
landmarks they had already set up, together with 
many of those who had learned to regard them; 
they must face the truth that many a genuine 
altruist, shocked unutterably by the revelations of 
the war, is a little ashamed of his earlier altruism 
and anxious to forget its existence. They must 
be prepared for a certain coarsening of the nation's 
moral fibre, for a long-lived return to the more 
brutal outlook associated with the Napoleonic era. 
In some countries revenge will have become an ar- 
ticle of faith, in others suspicion will be a no less 
dominant factor. The whole mental currency will 
have suffered debasement, and it will be difficult 
for some vices to be recognised as anything worse 
than virtues enforced upon a nation by the hazard 
of war. 

If the truth about the whole conflict that has 
laid waste so great a portion of the civilised world 
could be ascertained and agreed, the difficulties 
would tend to disappear, responsibility would be 
fixed. Unfortunately, agreement is beyond the 
generation's reach; we may remember that there 
are many who still regard the seizure of Silesia by 



THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL 21 

Frederick the Great as a genuine expression of 
Prussia's mission, and that history is written to 
suit the country to which it is intended to appeal. 
Limitations, whether geographical, political, or so- 
cial, are the sworn foes of truth, and in the effort 
to remove them an appeal to international com- 
mon sense affords the best hope of success. 

For many of the world's thinkers who stay at 
home to-day, neither physically fit to fight nor 
financially able to succour distress, there is this 
great work waiting to be done. They cannot fight 
soldiers, but they can fight rancour, malice, and 
uncharitableness. They cannot fill hungry bodies, 
but they may help to feed starved minds. They 
can bring a light to those who walk in darkness 
and make articulate the thoughts that stir many a 
heart and brain. They can give courage to those 
who fear the sound of their own voices and have 
not the strength of mind to say the words that 
may not be spoken without offence to the unthink- 
ing. When fighting is over — and it will pass, as 
all tragedies must, though it seems to fill a life- 
time while it lasts — the greatest questions of strife 
will clamour for a wise solution. People write 
glibly about the war that is to end war, but let 
us remember that this issue depends not upon 
statesmen but upon the democracies of all the com- 
batant and neutral countries. What we want is a 



m A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

modern Peter the Hermit or two in every coun- 
try of Europe, to preach the crusade of Christi- 
anity and to bring home to the world at large the 
price of war. There is no material reward for 
this service, and even recognition is likely to be 
posthumous; the courage required is of the fine 
kind that moves alone over uncharted ground. But, 
just as a kingdom at war calls for men to man 
the trenches and face annihilation with the smiling 
cheerfulness that robs death of half its sting and 
all its terror, so a return of peace calls for its heroes 
of thought to do battle with all the evils that make 
it possible for men who have no quarrel to assem- 
ble in their millions for mutual destruction. 

The whole system of government that makes 
these conditions and must be indicted for them is 
rotten to the core, but it is enthroned in power, 
and will not deal lightly, or even justly, with those 
who assail it. 

Against this hard truth we have to remember 
that every evil that has been subdued since the 
dawn of history has been fought in the first instance 
by one man or a handful of men. If we have only 
a small proportion of thinkers to-day we have more 
than there were of old time, when the simplest 
education was the advantage of the few. Pagan- 
ism was a more terrible force than militarism in the 
years of the advent of Christ, and it was over- 



THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL 23 

thrown by the labours of one man and his tiny fol- 
lowing. To-day democracy is all powerful, if and 
when it can be taught to open eyes and ears. Those 
who will undertake the perilous task may make this 
war, whatever and whenever its termination, a 
fruitful thing for the generations to come, while, 
on the other hand, if the lessons are not read aright, 
we may look to pass from tragedy to tragedy, until 
all civilisation is submerged. 



Ill 

England's drink legislation 

It is hard to pierce the thick cloud of cant in which, 
as a nation, we are all too apt to shroud ourselves. 
I do not think we are hypocritical, although that 
charge is laid to our door by all our ill-wishers, 
but I do believe we are hopelessly conventional, 
and seldom muster up the courage necessary to call 
a spade a spade. 

I have been re-reading of late, the endless com- 
ment upon the drink legislation, some of it frankly 
inspired by publicans and sinners — I mean distil- 
lers — some of it the pure outpouring of cranks, 
most of it prejudiced, or uninformed, or both. We 
deplore drunken habits, but when Sir Cuthbert 
Quilter tried to persuade Parliament to pass a 
Pure Beer Bill he met with no success. The worst 
crimes against the person, the common and crimi- 
nal assaults on women and children, are largely 
due to drink, and of this drink raw and crude 
spirits are the worst part; but we do nothing to 
protect our poorer classes from the poison. To in- 
troduce "square face" gin among the black popu- 

24 



ENGLAND'S DRINK LEGISLATION 25 

lation of some of our possessions is a deadly of- 
fence, the punishment is heavy, swift, and certain, 
but to poison the workers of our great manufac- 
turing centres is business, and many quite worthy 
people believe that "when Britain first at Heaven's 
command arose from out the azure main" it was 
to do business, and as much of it as possible. Nat- 
urally it follows that the fight against cant is all 
the harder because most of us do not recognise cant 
when we hear it. I remember how when temper- 
ance legislation was first mooted as a war measure 
many friends who can afford to buy pure French 
wines and spirits of great age and mellowness sol- 
emnly assured me that temperance legislation is 
mere foolishness, and that they themselves are liv- 
ing proofs that moderation, good health, and a wise 
activity march hand-in-hand. 

But of late years a certain number of women of 
all classes have been drinking more than is good 
for them, and since the war broke out the work- 
ing women's temptations in this direction and the 
opportunity to indulge them have grown side by 
side. 

The majority of working women are as sober 
as the majority of every class, but, though there 
are thousands of temperate women, they are 
matched by thousands of intemperate ones, the 
number has grown apace, and I feel they should 



26 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

be saved from themselves. The sober classes can- 
not resent restriction. It leaves them where they 
were. The intemperate classes may resent restric- 
tion, but it remains necessary in their own interests. 

I don't suppose many people read Harrison 
Ainsworth's novels to-day, but I remember a strik- 
ing passage in "Jack Sheppard," where Mrs. Shep- 
pard justifies herself to her friend Wood, the car- 
penter, who has told her that Gin-lane is the near- 
est road to the churchyard. It is worth quoting — 

"It may be; but if it shortens the distance and 
lightens the journey I care not," retorted the 
widow. . . . "The spirit I drink may be poison — 
it may kill me — perhaps it is killing me, but so 
would hunger, cold, misery — so would my own 
thoughts. I should have gone mad without it. 
Gin is the poor man's friend — his sole set-off 
against the rich man's luxury. . . . When worse 
than all, frenzied with want, I have yielded to hor- 
rible temptation and earned a meal the only way 
I could earn one ... I have drunk of this drink 
and forgotten my cares, my poverty, and my 
guilt." 

The working women whose husbands are at the 
war have many excuses. They are deprived of 
their husbands, and — though there is no need to 
emphasise the point it cannot be overlooked — their 
lives are a drab monotony of toil, their surround- 



ENGLAND'S DRINK LEGISLATION 27 

ings are often of the most unfavourable descrip- 
tion, the only restraint that can reach them is self- 
restraint, and their training has done little to pro- 
vide it. The public-house offers companionship, a 
brief surcease of anxiety, light and warmth. Many 
are enervated by much child-bearing, worn out by 
much house or factory work. They meet tempta- 
tion and succumb, but let us remember that in 
classes removed from the same form of temptation 
there is no lack of intemperance. A very small 
dose of bad spirits is enough to provide the cheap 
anodyne some are seeking, and under the influence 
of drink they are apt to lose their self-respect. 
The craving for drink grows with what it feeds 
on, and in all too many cases the hold upon self- 
respect falters and is lost. We have sent very 
many men to the war, but enough and more than 
enough remain behind to take advantage of women 
who have lost all or even a part of their normal 
control. 

In touch with serious workers in many of the 
fields of endeavour that make brief oases in the 
deserts of industrialism, I know that both drink 
and prostitution have increased since war began, 
and I know that drink is the great support of 
prostitution, and that thousands of women of the 
class we must pity most have a natural sense of 
shame that drink destroys. If the demons of ruin 



28 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

— gin and whisky — had not been busy pouring 
gold into the national treasury, day by day and 
year by year, they would have been exorcised long 
since. But business is business, and the gentle- 
men whose activity corrupts the country can al- 
ways talk of freedom and liberty, and declare to 
thunders of applause that Britons never shall be 
slaves. The possibility of being free to be a slave 
to drink never occurs to them, or if it does they 
forget to mention it. 

But while I welcome legislation that will tend 
to keep women sober, and believe that our sex 
stands in need of more sobriety by reason of its 
sedentary life, I am far from thinking that the 
law that is good for women is necessarily good 
for man. The conditions are altogether different. 
The self-respecting artisan and skilled worker 
drink less than ever they did. The men who are 
doing the country's work to-day in all the arma- 
ment manufacturing areas need a stimulant, need 
it far more than the prosperous City man, the real 
toper of our times. He will drink champagne and 
whisky with his lunch, and, having had quite 
enough of both, will damn the working classes for 
being given to the use of intoxicants. I have been 
through some of those great works in the north, 
where labour at and round the furnaces is unre- 
mitting, and where to-day the pace has been in- 



ENGLAND'S DRINK LEGISLATION 29 

creased to the extreme limit of physical power. 
To preach temperance to the armament worker is 
an absurdity; if he is not to be stimulated accord- 
ing to his needs his hours will need to be greatly 
diminished; it is impossible for him to give out 
unless he takes in. Why, in the name of all that 
is sensible, should he not have that which will help 
him? Why should he have remained so long at 
the mercy of cheap, vile spirits that are a more 
or less effective poison? Why should he be at the 
mercy of the people who, having little hard work 
to do, can thrive comfortably upon lemonade and 
barley water? The manufacturers spare no pains 
to obtain the very finest material for their own 
work; if it is necessary to spend a few or many 
thousands of pounds upon new plant the money is 
forthcoming without a murmur. Does it pass the 
wit of these sapient people to give to humanity 
a little of the thought they give to raw material? 
Can they not see that the best and purest drink 
that the new regulations permit is within reach 
of the workers, and that the rest is out of reach? 
It has long been the custom of the capitalist class 
in normal times to give the workman bad drink 
with one hand and to raise the other hand with 
an expression of holy horror against the sin of 
drunkenness, quite ignoring the truth that the 
quality, rather than the quantity, that people drink 



30 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

is often the deciding factor — that every class 
drinks, and that if the vice looks worse in one class 
than another it is because the poorer the man or 
woman, the viler the alcohol supplied to them. 
There are so many excellent people who preach 
temperance and live on the dividends of drunken- 
ness, there are so many who believe that a rea- 
sonable excess in matters of drink is a form of 
manly virtue, and there are yet more who believe 
honestly in moderation, and do not see that their 
good brand of claret, burgundy, or brandy should 
be denied to them, seeing they have never abused it. 

For myself, I drink a glass of good wine; fail- 
ing that I am content with pure water. If we 
could give our working classes nothing but the 
best, and at a price within their means, I should 
look askance at legislation, of whatever kind; but 
I recognise the old truth that the destruction of 
the poor is their poverty, and that the working 
man and woman have always been penalised, and 
will continue to be, until Government recognises 
its responsibilities, and rides its supporters of the 
drink trade with a very tight rein. 

Above all I feel that the new legislation that 
has first restricted and then diluted the working 
man's drink must not be regarded as an isolated 
instance, but as part of the vast changes that the 
war will ensue. The working man will not forego 



ENGLAND'S DRINK LEGISLATION 31 

his legitimate refreshment; it is for the Govern- 
ment to see that it is pure and reasonably harmless. 
Good beer in moderation will not hurt anybody; 
bad spirits are the foundation of disease and crime, 
and, in their silent fashion, are always fighting 
against the best interests of the State. Sometimes, 
when I read that the perpetrator of some ghastly 
crime has been sentenced to death or a long term 
of imprisonment, with all the pomp and circum- 
stance of our criminal courts, I find myself wonder- 
ing what poison was administered to him in some 
squalid public-house, and who among those who 
rejoice that justice has been done, or vengeance 
executed, have actually derived financial benefit 
from the drink that turned a man into a beast. 
We punish the poor fool with a diseased appetite, 
we confer some honour or reward upon the prime 
offender. Then when our enemies say that we are 
hypocrites we are indignant because of their in- 
justice, or contemptuous of their ignorance, know- 
ing as we do, that God is in Heaven, and that 
business is business. 

Finally, and quite apart from the immediate 
significance of the drink question, I rejoice in any 
legislation that will help the working-classes to the 
full possession of their faculties. If drink helps 
them to forget intolerable surroundings, insufficient 
pay, the deprivation of their fair share of the 



32 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

world's beauties, let us be glad that it is taken 
from them in its worst forms. They will see with 
clear eyes and with wiser heads, they will no longer 
be at the mercy of those who pander to their weak- 
ness in order to keep them weak. They will en- 
ter upon the great struggle that lies before democ- 
racy with stronger will and stronger armour. They 
have surrendered much of their power to the pub- 
lic-house, and the longer its shutters are up the 
more leisure they will have to see that there are 
better things in life, the greater will be their de- 
termination to share them with the fortunate 
classes. 

There is a time of trouble in store; they cannot 
be too well equipped to meet it. 



IV 

WAR AND MARRIAGE 

The problem that faces a State when it sends its 
best and most virile men to kill and to be killed 
has certain aspects that few have the courage to 
handle. For long years, while Europe was an 
armed camp, the claims of love were admitted amid 
the demands of war, but now that the dreaded era 
— which each nation was hurrying through the me- 
dium of extravagant armaments and secret diplo- 
macy — has come upon us, we are without a defi- 
nite plan for securing the continuity of the best 
elements in the race. If I thought that this ap- 
palling war were no more than the prelude to 
others, I would pray that every woman might be 
sterile, but hope, our last and eternal refuge against 
the ills of life, suggests that this most terrible 
cataclysm will strengthen the hands of democracy 
and give it the strength to resist further sacrifices 
in years to come. While the grass grows the horse 
starves, and while we think of the generation to 
come, thousands, hundreds of thousands of Eu- 
rope's best and bravest lie in their hasty graves, 

33 



34 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

and the cry of Mother Earth is still "they come." 
What has been done by our rulers to see that the 
fittest shall leave behind them some to take a share 
of the white man's burden? 

Very little. The men of the middle and upper 
classes who happened to be engaged have in very 
many cases been wise and patriotic enough to 
marry, and their wives have proved themselves as 
full of courage as of love. In order to marry, men 
have often been obliged to pay the Church an ab- 
surd tax, for the Church has shown itself quite 
inadequate to the occasion, and trumpery restric- 
tions, meaningless in times of peace and a scandal 
in time of war, have not been relaxed. The poor 
man cannot afford a special license, and in many 
instances has married without the aid or sanction 
of the Church. As we know, the State decided 
to recognise the unmarried wives of the nation's 
brave defenders, a courageous and proper step that 
evoked the wildest protests from the narrow- 
minded, the "unco guid," and the fanatics who be- 
lieve that man was made for morality rather than 
that morality was made for man. They did not 
pause to reflect that our absurd and antiquated 
divorce laws are the chief cause of illicit unions, 
and that divorce is hardly less hard for the poor to 
obtain than are decent housing, warm clothing, 
and nourishing food. Happily, in making this con- 



WAR AND MARRIAGE 35 

cession to the men who are offering their lives to 
their country, the genius of red tape contrived to 
assert itself. Hard though it may be to realise, 
it was for some time a fact that, if a man home 
on leave married his unmarried wife in order that 
his children might bear his name, his wife's al- 
lowance ceased because he came under the head of 
those who married after enlisting! The very quin- 
tessence of stupidity could have achieved nothing 
finer. 

Unfortunately the majority of those at the front 
are unmarried. It was considered sufficient to find 
them physically sound, to vaccinate and inoculate 
them and then to send them to take their chance. 
The question of the years to come was never con- 
sidered. There is no department of War Office 
or Admiralty that embraces eugenics. I have 
looked in vain through the speeches of statesmen 
for a single recommendation to our defenders to 
marry and leave behind them some pledge of their 
affection, some asset for the real national treas- 
ury that does not consist of gold, as is popularly 
supposed, but of vigorous men and women as anx- 
ious to live for their country as they are willing 
to die for it. To be sure every wife would have 
cost the country three pounds a month for the 
term of the war, and this thought may have given 
our prudent legislators pause ; but I venture to sug- 



36 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

gest that a wife as a national asset is cheap, even 
at that price. 

The balance has been redressed to some extent, 
in fashion at once inevitable and unsatisfactory. 
The billeting of great masses of virile young men 
in various centres throughout the country, and the 
opportunities that the new life has afforded re- 
sulted in an increase in the number of illegitimate 
births. I have heard of this from many quarters, 
and have every reason to believe, in spite of de- 
nials, that no district in which large numbers of 
soldiers have been gathered together will prove an 
exception to the general rule. Whatever the moral 
aspect of the question, it cannot be overlooked or 
ignored. I deplore the promiscuity, though I be- 
lieve that a wise and daring statesmanship, ready 
to meet new conditions with new remedies, would 
have avoided it; but I would like to plead for the 
foolish mothers, often little more than girls, and 
for the babes, who in many instances will never see 
a father's face. 

I am not urging humanity in place of morality, 
for most people lack the moral courage to listen 
to such a plea; it is rather in the interests of the 
State that I urge the proper, and even generous, 
treatment of all those who, before this year is ended, 
will have entered the world unwanted and unwel- 
comed. They will be the children of men in the 



WAR AND MARRIAGE 37 

first flush of manhood, of men not lacking in cour- 
age and character (or they would not have joined 
the colours), of men whose fault was that they 
could not resist temptation in its least resistible 
form. We must think of the psychology of the 
soldier who knows that in a few short weeks he 
may be among the nameless dead, who has em- 
barked upon the greatest of all adventures, and 
says, "Let me rejoice and be merry, for to-mor- 
row I die." Doubtless in many cases he will return 
and marry the mother of his child if fate permits, 
often he will not return, and a soldier's death may 
well clear a soldier's name. 

It should not outrage morality to see that the 
children, whether they be many or few, born of 
men gone to the front should be looked after by 
the State where the mother is unable adequately 
to provide for them, and it should be possible, too, 
in eases where the father returns and marries the 
mother of his child, that such marriage should make 
the offspring legitimate. It is not a large conces- 
sion; in many European countries, France in- 
cluded, marriage atones for previous indiscretions, 
and if this were so in England there would be a 
much greater tendency to regularise irregular 
unions for the children's sake. If nothing is done 
hundreds of young mothers who succumbed to ex- 
ceptional temptation will be outcasts. Under the 



38 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

most favourable normal conditions, the lot of the 
little one will be hard. When this hideous war 
is over, I would like the regimental officers to put 
the facts fairly and squarely to their men, to ask 
them to remember the girls they left behind them, 
and to be able to assure them, in the name of the 
Government, that if they would, on their return, 
marry the mother of their child, that child would 
become ipso facto legitimate. 

I am quite sure that many excellent people will 
find this plea immoral, that they will say it is con- 
doning irregular sex union, that it is removing the 
burden from those who have transgressed. I deny 
these suggestions even before they are made. To 
my mind there is more immorality, more glaring 
offence to the Creator in one battlefield full of 
dead and mangled humanity, than in all the illegit- 
imate children who will have come crying into 
our tear-stricken world before the war draws to its 
end. Those who rule over Europe and, being un- 
able to settle their differences, sent millions of men, 
who have no quarrel, to deface the earth and 
slaughter one another, are morally responsible for 
every change in the normal life of mankind. Those 
who replenish the earth are better than those who 
destroy it. 

War is a monstrous immorality that seeks to de- 
stroy the world; the illicit unions, to which I re- 



WAR AND MARRIAGE 39 

fer in the interest of those who pay the penalty — 
the mother and the child — are a minor immorality 
from which, with a little care, a little loving-kind- 
ness, and a little fore-knowledge, much good, much 
deep morality may spring. 

There is not much time to lose ; there will be much 
opposition to overcome, and the work of helping 
the helpless will be widely condemned by those who, 
having no feelings, are always able to control them. 
But the effort is worth making, and so I plead 
here, first, for ample facilities for those who wish 
to marry before they go abroad; secondly, for the 
legitimation of the children whose fathers, now at 
the war, come back and marry the mothers, and, 
lastly, for some special care of the mother and chil- 
dren themselves. 



NURSING IN WAR TIME 

Abuses cling to a crisis as barnacles to a ship, and 
every aspect of war has its own peculiar abuses. 
While millions do their duty with quiet heroism, 
there is always a minority that takes advantage, 
that corrupts others — or itself. Some believe that 
fraud and foolishness stay at home, that they can- 
not approach the field of arms, but this is far from 
being the case. 

My thoughts turn back to the South African 
war, when certain scandals were supposed to have 
reached their zenith; I look around me to-day, 
listen to the well-authenticated stories brought to 
me by relatives and friends, and know that South 
Africa did not tithe the possibilities of folly and 
excess. For once I am not pleading for my own 
sex, I plead for one part of it against the other, 
for a majority against a minority, for those who 
are doing what they are paid to do, against those 
who are voluntary workers. The position comes 
a little strangely to me when I look at it in this 
light, but the highly trained, conscientious, pains- 

40 



NURSING IN WAR TIME 41 

taking hospital nurse, whose patient heroism pro- 
claims her a true follower of Florence Nightingale, 
has been exposed to scandalous annoyance for no 
good purpose and to no useful end, and I feel that 
I must plead her cause, since she is in the last de- 
gree unlikely to plead it for herself. 

Society women of a certain class made them- 
selves so notorious in the military hospitals and 
elsewhere during the South African war that at 
least one General threatened to send them home 
and another refused to allow any more to come 
out. As soon as the greatest struggle of our his- 
tory started in August, 1914, certain women of 
means and position proceeded as silently and un- 
ostentatiously as was possible under the circum- 
stances to equip hospitals and to set about their 
self-appointed work. They laboured conscien- 
tiously and sought no more publicity than was nec- 
essary to enable them to collect money from phil- 
anthropists and friends. They did their best, some 
were already qualified by previous experience, 
others acquired their knowledge under the most 
trying conditions possible. They have worked 
since war began, well content to "scorn delights 
and live laborious days," some who are near and 
dear to me have said that they have well-nigh for- 
gotten the old life and the comforts they deemed 
indispensable only a little while ago. I think it 



42 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

may be claimed for them that they have played 
a good part, and that in helping others they have 
not sought to draw attention to themselves or min- 
imise the credit due to the trained sisterhood of 
love and pity that cheers the wounded and comforts 
the dying as "The Lady with the Lamp" taught 
them to do in the far-off days of the great Cri- 
mean struggle. They have made many friends and 
no enemies; the hero of the trenches and the as- 
saulting party has not given more to his country, 
for both have given their all, the man his strength, 
the woman her practical sympathy, and both a high 
degree of physical and moral courage. 

Unfortunately there is in London to-day a very 
large company of young women to whom war was 
little more than a new sensation. They are not 
old enough to understand or young enough to be 
restrained. In normal times they must be "in the 
movement," however foolish that movement may 
be, and a war that staggers the old world and 
the new leaves them very much where they were 
before. Under the rose they have not diminished 
their aforetime gaiety, dances and dinner-parties 
have been the order of the hour. They have not 
been trumpeted by the section of the Press that 
delights in recording vain things, but those who 
view the currents of London's social life know that 
I am writing the simple truth. There is nothing 



NURSING IN WAR TIME 43 

to be said; let those laugh who may and can at 
such a season, their laughter proclaims them what 
they are. 

Unfortunately the people I have in mind have 
not been content to devote themselves to brainless 
frivolity because they must sample every sensation 
that the seasons provide, they invaded the sanc- 
tuary of the hospital nurse. Scores found their 
way to the great London hospitals in town to face 
what they were pleased to regard as training; I 
have known some who have danced till 3 a.m. and 
have presented themselves at the hospital at 8 
o'clock! Everybody knows that the training of a 
real hospital nurse is a very serious matter, that 
it makes full demand upon physical and mental 
capacity, and that a long period is required to 
bring the seed of efficiency to flower or fruit. The 
social butterflies made no such sacrifices; they ac- 
quired a trifling and superficial knowledge of a 
nurse's work, and then set their social influence to 
work in order to reach some one of the base hos- 
pitals where they might sample fresh experience. 
If they were really useful there it would be un- 
kind to offer a protest, but the general opinion is 
that they did more harm than good. They sub- 
verted discipline, they were a law to themselves, 
they were too highly placed or protected to be 
called to order promptly, they showed neither the 



44 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

inclination nor the capacity for sustained useful- 
ness. To sit at the end of a bed and smoke ciga- 
rettes with a wounded officer does not develop the 
efficiency of a hospital. 

One heard repeatedly in the early months of 
the war that this girl or that had gone to the front, 
and one imagined devotion, self-sacrifice, self-re- 
straint, and a dozen kindred virtues. Unfortu- 
nately it is chiefly in the realm of imagination that 
these virtues existed. For the rest the interlopers 
wanted limelight, and plenty of it, their pictures 
flooded the illustrated papers, and to read what 
was written of them the inexperienced person might 
imagine that they were bearing the heat and burden 
of the day, the solitude and anxiety of the night, 
while in very truth they did no more than search 
for fresh sensation in an area that should be sacred. 

The type of mind that can seek refuge from self 
and boredom in such surroundings cannot be 
stricken into seriousness; tragedy cannot reach it. 
To do a very minimum of work, to attach them- 
selves to the most "attractive" cases, to carry small 
talk, gabble and gossip into places where so many 
come to die, these were the main efforts of the 
young society nurses, and all these outrages were 
carried on for months on end. The real nurses and 
sisters were, I am told, bitterly indignant. They 
asked no more than to be left alone to do their 



NURSING IN WAR TIME 45 

best; but they knew how hard it is to make an 
effective protest, and they had little or no time to 
do so. They recognised by reason of their train- 
ing, the full motive of the excursion into the re- 
gion of suffering; that craving for excitement, or, 
in bad cases, erotomania was the motive power. 
They found their work impeded by the sisterhood 
of impostors that responds so readily to a fashion 
of its own making, and their chief hope was that 
this sensation might pass as so many others have 
passed, and that the brainless, chattering, thought- 
less, empty company, tired of blood and wounds, 
would find some paramount attraction nearer home. 
If there are any who are prepared to think I 
have overstated the case or have traduced the young 
women who were lately "somewhere in France," 
let them find out from their particular heroine how 
much time she gave to training, how she received 
her appointment, and how much real hard work she 
did day by day. That a few have striven hard and 
nobly I would be the last to deny, but these are 
not enough either to leaven or purify the mass or 
to elevate the action of a class that might have 
been better employed. Let us remember, too, that 
suffering is always with us, and that even when 
war is over there will be far too much in all the 
great centres of our own country. Are these but- 
terfly nurses prepared to remember in the future 



46 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the profession they invaded? Will they respond 
to the calls that are made to help, not young, at- 
tractive and valiant men, but men, women, and chil- 
dren in every phase of helplessness and hopeless- 
ness? I do not think so. There is neither noto- 
riety nor limelight in the sober, serious life of the 
hospital nurse and sister. Above all there is a hard 
and necessary discipline that calls for much moral 
courage to render it tolerable. Physical courage 
is seldom lacking either in men or women who are 
well-bred, and it may be freely granted that a cer- 
tain measure was demanded even of the butterfly 
nurses; but there is no redemption in this. To 
savour the full sense of life without courage is im- 
possible. One might as readily make an omelette 
without breaking eggs. In this" case it is courage 
misdirected, energy misspent. 

I feel very strongly about this scandal — so 
strongly that I have not hesitated to write what 
is bound to offend some of my own friends; but 
there are times when it is impossible to be silent 
if one would live on tolerable terms with one's self. 
I feel that in these days woman is called upon to 
make supreme sacrifices, that whai she is giving 
even now is less than will be required of her later 
on, that her war record and her record when peace 
is about to return will be scanned closely and criti- 
cally by generations of really free women yet un- 



NURSING IN WAR TIME 47 

born. To know of a blot upon woman's war-time 
service record and to make no attempt to erase 
it is impossible. The record of the real nursing 
sisterhood is brilliant in the extreme. Why should 
it be obscured for the sake of a few highly placed 
and foolish young women who sought with the min- 
imum of labour to make the maximum of effect? 
It is unjust, ungenerous, and altogether unworthy 
of the representatives of families that in many 
cases have earned their ample honours legitimately 
enough. 

Great Britain owes more than it can ever re- 
pay to the nursing sisterhood; and it is intolerable 
that while their silent heroism passes with so lit- 
tle recognition, any girl of good family who as- 
sumes a uniform she has not won the right to wear 
should pose as the representative of a sisterhood 
she is not worthy to associate with, of whose tra- 
dition she is ignorant, of whose high discipline and 
complete restraint she is intolerant. There are 
three classes of women in our midst. The first 
earns reward and claims it, the second earns re- 
ward and does not claim it, the last claims reward 
and does not earn it. Of these classes the real nurse 
belongs to the second, and the butterfly sisterhood 
to the third. At such a season as this there is 
no room in our midst for the last, and it would be 
well for us all if authority could spare a moment 



48 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

from manifold activities firmly and ruthlessly to 
suppress its future activities. The hardship in- 
volved would be of the slightest and the benefit seri- 
ous and lasting. 



VI 

TWO YEARS OF WAR — WOMAN'S LOSS AND GAIN 

The long-drawn-out agony of strife is now two 
years old and, as each day adds its tale of slaughter 
to the incalculable total, we women may pause in 
our war work for a moment and endeavour to es- 
timate our own position. We are no longer as we 
were, "like Niobe, all tears." Niobe, if I remem- 
ber rightly, taunted the gods, and for this offence 
all her children were taken from her. We women 
did nothing to cause our own misfortune; on the 
contrary, we strove in our little way to promote 
peace, and to that end, above many others, we 
sought a hearing in the councils of Lhe nations. 

But it was not to be. Our claims were ridiculed 
or ignored, and now man-made war has swept over 
Europe like a blight, and we are left to aid our 
country through the day and to mourn, when the 
long day's work is done, for our fathers and 
brothers, our husbands and sons. Yet perhaps the 
worst is not with those who mourn. The Immor- 
tals can sport with them no longer. When the 

last of Niobe's twelve children had passed, the lim- 

49 



50 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

its of Latona's vengeance were reached. To have 
killed the mother too had been a kindness. 

The woman whose son or husband has been 
snatched from her knows the fullness of sorrow, 
but anxiety for their fate must pass her by, while 
those of us whose loved ones are on the battlefield 
would hardly hope for a moment's peace of mind 
if it were not for the duties that engage our work- 
ing hours and sometimes earn dreamless sleep. In 
a wonderful procession that tramped through 
muddy London under the rain a year ago I saw a 
great petition by women for the means not only to 
serve, but to forget. 

After all, this claim to national service is no more 
than was advanced in the old days when access to 
the heads of the Government was barred and the 
hooligans of a great city were allowed to give full 
rein to their impulses. Then our rulers thought 
they could dispense with women, to-day we are rec- 
ognised as indispensable. That is all, but it is very 
much, and it sets me the question that is the title 
of this brief paper — What has woman lost and 
what has woman gained? 

She has lost much that was dearest to her, much 
that life is powerless to replace. All the springs 
of her being have nourished the love that she has 
given to her dear ones, to the man who was her 
choice, to the son who fed upon her life. In many 



TWO YEARS OF WAR 51 

cases she has lived almost entirely in her chil- 
dren, for the ties that bind her to the active pleas- 
ures of life grow weak in conflict with the powers 
of maternity. She has forgotten the brief years 
in which she lived for herself and savoured all the 
sweets of existence, she has lived in her children, 
happy chiefly in their happiness, ambitious only 
for their future and concerned with the struggle 
for the freedom of her sex less on account of her 
own generation than on account of that which is 
to follow. It is woman's role to give, it is man's 
role to take, and custom has staled for him the in- 
finite variety of his taking. And now he has taken 
so much that made life worth living that she seeks 
an anodyne for her grief in giving him all that is 
left to give, the labour of her hands. 

This is not only true of the women of England, 
it applies equally to the women of every belligerent 
country, friend and foe alike, and it may be said 
that between the women of the world there is a 
common sacrifice and a common sympathy. All 
have suffered, all must continue to suffer, on a 
scale that this old world of ours, with all its crimes 
and tragedies beyond number and beyond belief, 
cannot parallel. It is this truth that steadies our 
nerves and strengthens our hearts and sets us look- 
ing, past the ultimate sacrifice, to what may lie be- 
yond, not for ourselves but for others. 



52 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

All that we have has been taken or is being de- 
manded of us. Is there in all the world something 
to which we may look forward with confidence, 
something that may justify hope? I think there 
is. Without any sense of pride we may claim that 
woman has at least vindicated the claims she ad- 
vanced in those peaceful days that seemingly lie so 
far behind us. She claimed that she was worthy to 
play her part in the conduct of national life, that 
she was in very truth indispensable to it; she was 
told, by brutal word or brutal deed, that her am- 
bitions outran her capacities. One year of war has 
given the lie to this assertion. Woman, even be- 
fore the coming of compulsion, encouraged her 
dearest to go, if needs be, to their death, in a war 
for which she has no shadow of responsibility be- 
fore God or man. Conventions, agreements, trea- 
ties, alliances, in all these things she has no share, 
but as soon as they materialise in war she must pay 
the heaviest price. 

The excitement and glory of a struggle in which 
the fighter feels that he has surrendered his life 
to high causes is not for her, she must be content 
with the pale reflex or with the tragedy. In her 
heart she may know that man incurs the penalties 
of his ambitions or bad diplomacy or unprepared- 
ness for upheaval ; but those penalties press heavier 
on women than on men, for, even granting that the 



TWO YEARS OF WAR 53 

love of husband for wife and wife for husband be 
equal, yet the passion of a mother for her child and 
her grief when he is snatched from life in the hours 
when life is unfolding all its possibilities, is some- 
thing beyond the strength of man to grasp. 

But woman has not failed on account of her 
griefs, she has strangled them — or she has tried to 
with all the strength that has been given to her — 
and she has gone out into the market-place and said, 
"What more do you require of me? Ask and I 
will give, direct and I will obey." Hers has been 
the supreme sacrifice, and now at the moment when 
all that seemed worth striving for had passed, she 
sees suddenly a fresh horizon, the Pisgah view of 
the Promised Land. 

She realises that man is at last beginning to 
understand and even to acknowledge her place in 
the world, that the future cannot repeat the errors 
of the past, that the day-dawn of her emancipa- 
tion is visible. This war, reconciling so many dif- 
ferences, rebuking so much pride and bringing so 
many men and women face to face for the first 
time in their life with life's actualities, has united 
all workers, irrespective of class or sex. It is seen 
now that woman has a part to play in the con- 
duct of the State, and that there are spheres of ac- 
tivity in which women might and must work for 
the common good. She and man together must 



54 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

build up a new civilisation out of the wrecks of 
the old one, not only here but throughout the strife- 
stricken world. Old barriers, time-worn preju- 
dices, a blind conservatism — what part have these 
in the mental attitude of nations freed from over- 
whelming peril? 

The soul of my sex would be as desolate to-day 
as the ruined cities of Belgium, Poland, and Servia, 
were it not for the certain knowledge that our 
sacrifice has not been made in vain. We have the 
right to hope that our share in the work of the world 
is to be acknowledged at last, and that the spheres 
of our activity are to be widened. In this way, and 
only thus, we shall be able, in years that have yet 
to be, to influence thought and to influence action, 
to bring a humanizing note into the great chord of 
life. We shall strive through the sisterhood of 
women towards the brotherhood of man, and we 
shall be working among those who will be able to 
see for themselves what one-sided rule and one- 
sided domination have done for progress and civili- 
sation after their slow ascent to a position that at 
best left so much to be desired. 

The women of my generation will sow where 
they may not hope to reap, but there is nothing 
new for woman in this experience. It is her mis- 
sion in this world to sacrifice herself, from the hour 
when she accepts motherhood until the end. Her 



TWO YEARS OF WAR 55 

happiness is derived from the contemplation of the 
happiness of others, she lives in the new lives with 
which she renews the world. She will leave con- 
tentedly to others the prizes for which she laboured 
in years of peace and suffered through the season 
of war. It will be sufficient for her dimly to fore- 
see the time when those who have replaced her will 
give birth to sons with no more pangs than Nature 
demands, and give birth to daughters in the belief 
that they will not be widowed or fatherless or child- 
less through catastrophes of man's own making. 

So it seems to me, looking back at the cruel 
record of two years, that woman, for all her losses, 
has gained, that what she has lost is matter for 
her private sorrow, and what she has gained is mat- 
ter for universal joy. She has found the uses of 
adversity, she has accepted self-sacrifice for the sake 
of those who will be the better able to enjoy the 
rich fruits of life. In this knowledge she will la- 
bour, for the sake of this truth she will persevere 
with a confidence in the future that no shifting tides 
of chance can shake. And her watchword in the 
coming year is, Hope. 



VII 

CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND 

It is a commonplace that war brings in its train 
evils without number, but there are certain ills that 
are added to the inevitable ones either by greed of 
gain, indifference to progress or a determination to 
make profit at the expense of the State. We have 
in our midst at all times certain people who are 
concerned only with their own ends, and who re- 
gard all the means to those ends as legitimate. War 
time reduces the measure of restraint that the com- 
mon sense of the community imposes upon its 
greedier members. They find and seize their hour 
when normal conditions are upset. It would be 
easy to multiply instances, but in writing this paper 
I am concerned with one only — the employment of 
children on farms. 

To the average man who does not know a swede 
from a turnip or the difference between sainfoin 
and clover this is a small matter; to those of us 
who know the land and its problems, who adminis- 
ter estates large or small, who are morally if not 
legally responsible for the happiness and well-being 
of village communities, it is a tragedy. 

56 



CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND 57 

I can remember hearing my elders talk of the 
bad old days when the gang system prevailed all 
over England. The ganger was a contractor of 
irregular labour. He would enter a district in 
charge of his wretched company of men, women, 
and children, and would supply their labour at fixed 
rates to the farmer who needed it. He charged so 
much a day for each hand; he saw to it that one 
and all did their full day's work. They were fed 
abominably, housed in barns and out-houses, and 
lived in a promiscuity that would revolt a gipsy. 
At last even the thick-skinned countryside could 
endure the abomination no longer, and the "gang- 
er" disappeared. It took years for the Legisla- 
ture to discover that, apart from the cruelty in- 
volved in the custom, it was creating fresh material 
for gaols and asylums, that children needed edu- 
cation rather than field labour, that the mothers 
could not combine maternity with hard work in the 
fields, that if you deprive people of the means of 
living decently they will revert to the state of sav- 
agery. 

The agricultural labourer's struggle has not been 
limited to the land. He has been fighting for 
years to raise his miserable wage. When I was a 
girl it was about a shilling a day with "small beer" 
of the farmer's brewing thrown in. It is about 3s. 
6d. a day now; but against this the price of necessi- 



58 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

ties has gone up between 50 and 100 per cent. Sav- 
ing is impossible, and even the old age pension that 
lightens the evening of his long day hardly avails 
to keep him from the workhouse — unless he has a 
wife of equal age or children who, out of their 
tiny means, will render a little assistance. He 
lives in a cottage that, if often picturesque, is nearly 
always overcrowded; his food and clothing are of 
the roughest, and for holidays he has Christmas 
Day and the wet weather, when he may sit at home 
— at his own expense — for when there is no work 
there is no pay. But he lives in hope; and some- 
times he goes on strike, to the disgust and indig- 
nation of his employer, and his children have been 
getting a better chance in life than he had. They 
are supposed to be kept at school until they are 
fourteen. He was rook scaring at the ripe age of 
ten for a penny a day. 

Rural education is a poor thing enough. Chil- 
dren may have to walk two miles or more, in all 
weathers, to the village school. Their father can- 
not afford to buy them good boots or a water-proof 
coat; it is beyond his means to give them nourish- 
ing food, and so help them to fight the diseases of 
childhood ; but he feels that something is being done 
for them, and, as a rule, he does nothing to make 
them wage-earners before their time. Now they 
are taken from school two years before an age 



CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND 59 

that the trade unions hold to be insufficient; they 
are sent on the land to work for a wage of eighteen 
pence a day, in any weather, on any soil, without 
the proper clothing and with insufficient food. 
There they will undersell the rural labour market, 
they will be robbed of their childhood, they will go 
without supervision at a time when they need it 
most. And the Bumbles of our Education Coun- 
cils have nodded thick, approving heads. 

It is hard to write patiently of such retrograde 
devices, put forward, as all such proposals are, in 
the name of the country's needs. If these needs 
be genuine, which I doubt, if there be no adequate 
supply of female labour to be obtained for a fair 
price, why should the children of our poorest, the 
little ones whose physique has never been strength- 
ened by sufficient nourishing food and by the 
hygiene of the home, be called upon to bear the 
burden single-handed? Why should not Eton and 
Harrow, Rugby, Marlborough, Winchester, and 
other schools without number, serve the national 
need? The lads at these expensive establishments 
can at least complete their education after the 
war, they can carry health and strength to the fields, 
they can acquaint themselves at first hand with 
the realities of labour, a knowledge that, with the 
changing times ahead, will be valuable to many of 
them who will inherit land in days to come. Will 



60 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the farmers t;Iio are sending to the fields the half- 
grown children of their ill-paid labourers contribute 
their own to work by their side? I am sure that 
the mere suggestion will rouse the wildest indig- 
nation; but all the children, whatever their advan- 
tage or disadvantage, are British citizens, and it is 
not too much to suggest that those who have a stake 
in the country should at least do as much as those 
for whom fortune provided no birthright. Let us 
be democratic in deeds as well as words. I am 
quite sure that, if the doubtful privilege extended 
to the rural labourer's children were conferred at 
the same time upon the children of all patriots, the 
councils would expunge their fatuous resolutions 
from their minute books ; they would make all pos- 
sible haste to forget them. 

But it may be urged that, in pleading for the 
childx'en, I have overlooked the crying needs of 
the countryside, that I am ignorant of the real need 
for labour to deal with the increased area of the 
corn and for the late-sown spring crops, for it is 
clear that, as soon as the proposal for universal 
child labour is made, the scheme falls to the ground. 

I am well aware of the existing conditions — 
what landlord is not? — and I have a remedy for 
them. It is not a popular one, but I am not search- 
ing for popularity. In spite of the genuine sacri- 
fices that have been made by many classes of the 



CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND 61 

community, much more remains to be done. We 
have all over the country racing stables full of 
lads who cannot go to the war and of men who 
have passed serviceable age. Hard work in the 
fields from April to the time the last corn is under 
the stack thatch would do them all the good in the 
world, and, with some knowledge of all classes of 
horses, I believe that horses would survive and the 
superiority of the British sires would not be lost. 

Having depleted the racing stables, even at the 
cost of reducing the number of race meetings, I 
would turn my attention to the golf clubs: their 
name is legion. What an army of "ineligible" cad- 
dies might be recruited for the fields and given the 
chance of earning a living intelligently! I go so 
far as to hint that thousands of the elderly gen- 
tlemen who still pursue the golf ball might find 
more useful occupation in ministering to the coun- 
try's genuine needs. 

Let me pass from one monstrous suggestion to 
another. I would enroll the gamekeepers and the 
gillies; for once I would leave the wild pheasants 
to breed as they will and the grouse to work out 
their own salvation. A desperate remedy, but then 
our disease is dangerous. We need corn even more 
than pheasants, and other game birds can look after 
themselves. There might be an epidemic of poach- 
ing, in which case I would sentence every poacher 



62 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

to three months' hard labour — on the land. We 
have in this country to-day hundreds, I might say 
thousands, of sturdy middle-aged men who are now 
following occupations that, while they are perfectly 
reasonable in times of peace, are superfluous, even 
derogatory, to-day. 

There is yet another class that can be mobilised 
to serve the country's need. I would like to see 
the last remaining footmen and the valets of mid- 
dle age allowed to enjoy a summer of useful ac- 
tivity. They, too, may be in their right place at 
normal times; now their country needs them more 
than their masters do. A little hardship would be 
involved, but I do not believe there are many em- 
ployers of superfluous or ornamental labour who 
would, if the matter were put before them fairly 
and temperately, place their own petty comforts 
before the country's need for food. We hope and 
believe that we may rely upon our Fleet to feed 
us, but why should we run risks? No war is won 
until it is lost, and if by ill-fortune we experienced 
a shortage, I do not think that the owners of racing 
stables, the renters of shooting and fishing, the 
members of golf clubs and the employers of men 
servants could acquit themselves of a serious re- 
sponsibility. If all these sources of supply are 
tapped, and it is still found that the supply of la- 
bour in the fields is inadequate to the nation's needs, 



CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND 63 

let us proclaim a national holiday in all the schools 
of the country, and let the high and the low born, 
the rich and the poor, seek the fields together. 
But until all sources of adult labour have been ex- 
hausted let us spare the little ones, and in any case 
let us see that those whose share of the good things 
of life is smallest are not called upon to endure 
trials and make sacrifices that we would shrink from 
demanding of our own children. 



VIII 

COMRADES 

In times when national emotion is deeply stirred it 
is possible for the close observer to get a glimpse 
of the main trend of thought. Just as a feather 
will show the direction of the wind, a word may- 
show the direction of a man's mind. It is on this 
account that I was deeply moved and greatly stim- 
ulated of late by hearing that as the gallant French- 
men attack the enemy their rallying cry is "Cama- 
rades, Camarades!" This is one of the most beau- 
tiful words in any language, it is the one by which 
a nation may rise to the height of its greatest 
achievement, whether in clearing its beloved land of 
a hated enemy or clearing its administration of 
the abuses from which no administration is free. 
One hardly dares to think of what the world might 
be like to-day if war had not been needed to estab- 
lish the wonderful unity the word bespeaks. 

There is not on all the earth a more democratic 
army than that of France, and to-day it is a perfect 
union, a veritable brotherhood. From the highest 
General to the humblest "piou-piou" there is but 

64 



COMRADES 65 

one aim, one ideal, prince and peasant pursue it to 
the end. One and all know that if success is to be 
achieved against heavy odds, it is by the help of 
the real brotherhood, the feeling that the accidents 
of birth and fortune do not count any longer, that 
"a man's a* man for a' that." Other countries have 
caught a glimpse of the truth, our own among the 
number, but it needed French clarity of vision to 
recognise the truth and crystallise it in a word — a 
simple word with the mystic number of letters and 
so powerful that, when it becomes the rallying cry 
in times of peace for all civilised nations, the evils 
under which men and women labour will be swept 
away like chaff before wind. 

For many years past I have been convinced that 
the enemies of mankind are not men. Ignorance, 
poverty, greed, vice, disease, these are the foes that 
prey upon all communities, and while those who 
foster them are of no brotherhood, those who would 
combat them need no more than brotherhood in or- 
der to overcome. War, in which a man makes the 
supreme surrender, in which he discounts the terror 
of death and makes purposes splendid by his de- 
votion, reveals the truth even to those who have 
never thought before. Will brotherhood survive 
war, or does it need the exaltation born of the great- 
est of world tragedies to open a nation's eyes — and 
keep them open? 



66 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

The history of our civilisation depends upon the 
answer to this question. Nothing less than brother- 
hood will enable the nation to face the widespread 
poverty that already exists, but will not be recog- 
nised until peace is restored. There will be very 
little money left in the countries of combatant na- 
tions, and there will be very many needs. The care 
of the wounded, the maimed and the helpless, pro- 
vision for the widows and the children of war will 
come first. Then there are the schools ; nothing is 
more vital to the future generation than education, 
and few great claims are more in danger of a grudg- 
ing treatment. 

There are two ways of handling a nation's af- 
fairs, one is to make the rich richer at the expense 
of the poor, the other is to make the poor less poor 
at the expense of the rich. The peaceful solution 
of the whole problem is found in the battle call of 
our gallant Allies. If we are "camarades, bons 
camarades !" we can endure our national privations 
and scarcely feel them, for we shall all be in the 
same boat, and it is not poverty that galls but the 
contrast between poverty and wealth. Down to 
the time when war began this contrast was ever 
present, it was becoming one of the great dangers 
of our time; it has not disappeared to-day, but it 
is far less noticeable, and as we continue to spend 
between thirty and forty million pounds a week on 



COMRADES 67 

war, the cases of contrast will tend to grow less and 
less. I look for the time when men and women will 
find it as distressing to flaunt riches as the poor find 
it to display the outward and indisputable signs of 
poverty. One does not envy even now the state of 
mind that enables a man to say that he is "doing 
very well out of this war." 

Among "comrades" such a thing would be im- 
possible, the only excuse for making money out of 
national misfortune is to be found in its wise distri- 
bution to alleviate the suffering that war renders 
inevitable. To amass wealth from the country's 
needs, to spend it on purely personal ends, to allow 
an orgie more terrible than the Black Death to fill 
private coffers, this surely is the negation of broth- 
erhood, and those who do it are the outcasts of civil- 
isation, even though they purchase palaces and peer- 
ages and every honour that unscrupulous Govern- 
ments vend in semi-privacy. How will the men 
who have thrown their lives into the scale tolerate 
the men who trafficked in the necessities of life, or 
the implements of death, and demand the high 
places as a reward for successful huckstering? They 
will not lightly reckon them in the ranks of the 
"comrades"; in a world founded on brotherhood 
there will be no place for them. If there be a place 
in the near future perhaps it will be the nearest 
lamp-post. Stranger things have happened. 



68 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Sometimes I think we could afford to lose this 
war, or, at least, not to win it, if the Frenchman's 
battle call could become the rallying cry of all par- 
ties and all grades in this country. Much as I 
loathe war and all it stands for, I feel that an in- 
stant victory would have been very bad for us, while 
a success won by waiting must at least purge our 
national life of the grosser elements. The mingling 
of high and low, of rich and poor, the price of strife 
demanded of each and all, the community wrought 
by suffering and by heavy loss, all these things are 
salutary for a nation grown plethoric by prosperity. 
It will not greatly matter if we lose half the world 
and gain our own souls, for the simple reason that 
an England wide-eyed, clean-limbed, and efficient 
could yet achieve and retrieve, while an England 
besotted by sloth and bemused by riches can only 
endure until the advent of a stronger and more de- 
termined race. 

Whatever our destiny, whatever the future holds 
in store, we shall be happy indeed if we can face 
difficulties, dangers, privation, or supreme victory 
with the cry of "Comrades !" When war came, this 
country was fast sinking towards civil strife, drift- 
ing for lack of the spirit of good fellowship. A few 
masters, innumerable men, industry organised into 
limited liability companies that the human touch, 
the community between employer and employed, 



COMRADES 69 

might cease, the wealth of the country divided on 
lines that gave 90 per cent, to a tenth of the popu- 
lation and divided the remaining one-tenth of the 
wealth between 90 per cent, of the people who cre- 
ate it, — these conditions were making for a social 
upheaval of bloodiest kind. Education starved, an 
infant mortality greater than the present waste of 
war, discontent, ill-feeling, class hatred, all these 
things were, all these things may be again, but not 
if the cry of "Comrades!" is taken up. 

Whether we win or lose, I see civil unrest in- 
evitable, for this war has sounded the death-knell 
of the old industrial, social, and political conditions. 
Nothing within the range of possibility can leave 
us just where we are, and worse than the struggle 
with an enemy is the struggle with a friend. 
Though I hold all war to be fratricidal, yet civil 
war must ever remain the worst form of it. As 
soon as the old problems force their way again to 
the fore the danger of civil strife becomes immi- 
nent, and let us remember that the working classes 
that come back from war will have forgotten what 
fear means. It seems to me that salvation lies in 
the Frenchman's fighting cry, that in giving his 
brothers a lead he has offered a lead to civilisa- 
tion. He has shown us how to make the inevitable 
changes peacefully. 

Idealism is out of fashion to-day because — let us 



70 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

not burke the truth — our idealists were deceived 
about Germany's intentions, and those in high 
places unconsciously misled the people. Yet let 
us cling to our ideals, for they may prove our best 
possession, and let us realise that the cry of "Com- 
rades!" may, as years pass and the old bitterness 
dies away, extend across frontiers and bind in a 
common brotherhood the sons of the men who 
sought to destroy one another. Such is the po- 
tency of a word that revivifies life, laughs at 
wounds and disarms death. It sums up the aspira- 
tions of the greatest reformers and social workers 
of old time, of the men, from John Ball to William 
Morris, who strove for England. Only the French 
people, with their innate sense of selection, could 
have picked upon a word that can sum up the best 
of the ideals of the human race. We are their debt- 
ors for it, and there is no nobler way of paying the 
debt than by developing the cry until it resounds 
from one end to the other of our Empire. It will 
renew our youth, it will destroy many of the old 
evils that were even worse than war, it will realise 
the ambitions of men who lived and died for Eng- 
land in times of peace, when there is no reward for 
social heroism other than the consciousness of a 
supreme effort made on behalf of people one may 
never see, people who will never understand. 
If the future of the world is with sane, wide- 



COMRADES 71 

eyed democracies; if man is to be free to do the 
world's work and develop human destiny without 
turning aside at the bidding of kings and rulers; if^ 
humanity, with its common lot and destiny, is to 
develop the spirit of brotherhood that makes life 
beautiful, — we could have no finer rallying cry than 
France has offered. I do not believe that the coun- 
try capable of originating and responding to it can 
be beaten by sheer weight of numbers; I feel that 
it is one of the world's assets, and that somewhere 
in the background the Great Force we strive to 
comprehend, and, comprehending, to worship, will 
guard it against ultimate defeat. To doubt this 
were to believe that the race is to the swift and the 
battle to the strong, and that the man who can in- 
vent the most efficient machinery can dominate 
God's world. Such a belief is to me the most un- 
pardonable form of atheism. This world was not 
made, was not populated, was not instructed, that 
soulless machinery might hold it in thrall at last. 
The French know this, hence the battle cry that 
thrills me as I write. 



IX 

THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 

In the great gale that sweeps over Europe the 
few rags that hide the nakedness of monarchy flut- 
ter like scarecrows ; I find myself watching for the 
gust that will reveal to the gaze of the least discern- 
ing what a dangerous and ridiculous thing the bare 
bones of kingship have become. 

England has filed the teeth of the serpent, it can 
bite no more — the phrase is Swinburne's not mine. 
We keep our kings as we keep the Regalia in the 
Tower, well housed and well looked after, and be- 
tween the ruler and the ruled there is a pleasant, 
but indefinite relationship. Kingship for us is the 
focus of patriotism and loyalty, but we should not 
go to war because the house of Guelph were jealous 
of the house of Hapsburg, or on bad terms with 
the house of Hohenzollern. 

Those German pundits who believe that King 
Edward made the Anglo- German war have never 
grasped our national attitude toward monarchy, 
or King Edward's ungrudging recognition of the 
merits of the German people. 

72 



THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 73 

With us monarchy is an abstraction, very little 
more. 

There was a time when it was supposed to be the 
fountain of honour, but politicians have fouled 
the waters so much and have bought and sold hon- 
ours so unblushingly that modern royalty would 
be a little ashamed to father so large an illegitimate 
progeny. A business nation, we have a fixed price 
for everything. We pay our kings so much a year, 
and if they exceeded their allowance the State 
would hesitate to make up the deficit. Baronies, 
baronetcies, knighthoods and the rest have their 
fixed price, generally, though not invariably, pay- 
able to the party whips who consider themselves 
morally bound to deliver the goods. 

When we were on the brink of war in 1914, M. 
Poincare wrote a touching letter to King George, 
such as an old-time king might have sent to a 
brother sovereign. King George signed a reply 
that has been published — one would wager that 
nothing save the signature involved his heart or 
his pen. It was no more than the letter of a greatly 
harassed minister who was trying to think while he 
balanced himself on a high and unstable fence. 
Here was ample evidence that all who run might 
read of the final surrender of the monarchy, and in- 
cidentally, of the desire of England to maintain 
peace. 



74 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Nobody wants more than the shadow of king- 
ship in this country. Everybody with more than 
the most perfunctory knowledge of history has real- 
ised that half the wars of the world have been 
fought for the gratification of kings, and most of 
the others have been waged in the name of religion, 
i.e. to demonstrate the superiority of one orthodoxy 
over another. Slowly, and at such a sacrifice as 
the world may well shudder to contemplate, we have 
come within sight of the end of religious strife. 
There remain wars of kingship, the present one 
is little more than that. 

Down to a few years ago the old gates were still 
standing at Temple Bar to divide the City from 
Westminster. At Warwick Castle the drawbridge 
is still raised every night. In some of the cities 
of Southern Spain watchmen, armed with spears 
and oil lamps, still proclaim the time of night and 
the state of the weather. The "Miracle" of the 
Sacred Fire remains an annual spectacle at Easter- 
tide in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that is 
in Jerusalem. 

The world, as though conscious of the ugliness 
of so much that is modern, still clings to old cus- 
toms and institutions even when they are absurd. 
That is why autocratic kingship survives. 

The house of Hapsburg has been ruling in Eu- 
rope since the thirteenth century; in Germany as 



THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 75 

well as Austria for part of the time ; the rule of the 
Hohenzollerns dates from 1871. A German, Count 
Berthold, is said to have originated in the eleventh 
century the house of Savoy that governs Italy. In 
Spain we find the ubiquitous Hapsburgs and the 
Bourbons sharing rule. A Hohenzollern is in Ru- 
mania, and on the distaff side in Greece. A Prin- 
cess of the Hohenzollern house was the mother of 
King Albert of Belgium; Ferdinand of Bulgaria 
has Coburg and Bourbon blood. 

A system of inter-marriage has retained power 
in the hands of a few houses, but nature is ill-dis- 
posed toward inbreeding and has scourged the cun- 
ning of kings with insanity and disease. While 
democracy has grown in stature and in vision, while 
it has been claiming its own place in the sun, the 
small privileged class has diminished physically, 
mentally, morally, but still clings desperately to 
place. There are a few brilliant exceptions, Albert 
of Belgium for example, but Hapsburgs, Hohen- 
zollerns, Coburgs, and Bourbons are, generally 
speaking, no longer qualified from any standpoint 
to rule the destinies of free peoples. They are a 
little better than well-connected anachronisms, avid 
of the power that is passing from them and ready 
to offer any sacrifice that their subjects are capable 
of making in order that their time-tarnished pres- 
tige may shine again. 



76 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

The wishes of their people are the last thing to 
be considered by autocratic monarchs. They will 
not stand in the scale against the interests of their 
relatives, and in the courts of Europe it is hard 
to find a ruler who is not a cousin of some sort 
to all his fellow-sovereigns. Jealousy, ambition, 
ill report, dyspepsia, disease, dementia, any one of 
these evils if it be backed by greed, may avail to 
plunge innocent nations into the hell of war. Forces 
that sway a republic are powerless in an absolute 
monarchy or in one where servility and orthodoxy 
strive hand in hand. There are few European 
rulers who have half the sagacity of the chief ad- 
visers whom they may override at will. They are 
not as a rule men and women of great culture, few 
if any have ideas that belong of right to the twen- 
tieth century, their function has outgrown them, 
and the reverence they demand and receive is 
founded very largely upon ignorance and super- 
stition. 

To plunge Europe into war for purely personal 
ends has always seemed in the eyes of kings a rea- 
sonable action. Frederick the Great admitted that 
he started the Seven Years' War by stealing Silesia 
from Austria for "glory," and the records of Spain 
and Austria are full of similar crimes. 

Now that Europe has been shaken from base to 



THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 77 

summit, will the sober manhood of the twentieth 
century allow the present system to endure? 

On the other hand, I see a great movement to- 
ward giving kingship a fresh lease of life, toward 
perpetuating secret diplomacy and developing cleri- 
calism. But men who have stood face to face with 
the living God should decide to worship henceforth 
after the inclination of their own hearts. Elderly 
gentlemen of conservative tendencies are already 
writing to warn the public that, however awful the 
chaos now prevailing, democratic rule would have 
made it worse. I welcome such warnings, for they 
are a proof that the upholders of tradition are at 
last aware of the slippery places over which they 
must so shortly tread. 

If the democracy can see the truth, if its eyes 
refuse to be dazzled by flags, medals, and uniforms 
and its ears will convey each plausible speech to 
the brain for sober analysis, this war will not have 
been waged in vain. 

I hold in all seriousness that it is a strife of kings. 
Gladstone once asked anybody to tell him how the 
Austrian Empire had been of any service to hu- 
manity. The aggregation of uncongenial national- 
ities has been kept together for the greater glory 
of the effete house of Hapsburg, a house whose true 
history, even since Kaiser Franz Josef came to the 
throne, could not be printed. The genius of the 



78 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

German people, their magnificent education, stern 
discipline, tireless industry and full nurseries were 
conquering both hemispheres, but that was not suf- 
ficient. Unless the German could pay tribute to 
the house of Hohenzollern and increase the Im- 
perial prestige, progress was an egg without salt to 
the palate of the Potsdam hierarchy. 

The fruits of forty years of labour and a genera- 
tion of child-bearing were flung into the scale that 
the Hohenzollerns might stand more directly in the 
limelight. 

The people whose blood was to be spilt, whose 
wives were to be widowed, whose wealth was to be 
squandered, were wilfully deceived and were driven 
to war as the Pharaohs drove their warrior-slaves. 

Their awakening must come, and with it let us 
hope a further accession of strength to the Social 
Democracy that is the best hope of Germany. 

We know that neither England nor France de- 
sired war, that Russia, whatever her interest in the 
great Slav-Teuton controversy, was not ready for 
it, and the worst to be said of the Allied Powers 
is that, conscious of an enormous menace, they 
united to destroy it. But every thinking man knows 
that without the ambitions of a few soldiers, states- 
men (so-called), and officials this war had never 
come about. 

I have often compared the position of republics 



THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 79 

with that of monarchies and have cited the Ameri- 
can Republics. The United States live in peace, 
even the South American States, with their mixed 
population, their Spanish, Portuguese, German 
and Italian blood, are seldom found long at strife. 

Royalists have spoken to me glibly about the cor- 
ruption that is said to be inherent in republics. It 
is about the only charge they can formulate, and 
the reply is obvious. In republics corruption is 
hard to hide, it comes to the surface and is visible 
to all. In monarchies corruption, no less rife, is 
hard to expose; all the avenues to light and free 
speech are closed. 

Your republic brings character and brains to the 
top; your monarchy makes statesmen of courtiers 
and sycophants, men who will bow the knee to the 
Baal of the hour. 

A republic is open to the air of heaven. A mon- 
archy is a garden enclosed, richer in rank weeds 
than flowers. If Germany had been a republic, the 
Social Democrats could have learned the truth and 
acted upon it ; had Austria been a republic, giving 
equal voice to all the interests it affects to repre- 
sent, sympathy with the Slavs would have kept the 
rulers from their disastrous attempt to reduce Ser- 
bia to the status of a vassal kingdom. 

Kings have served their time. The ruler who 
rode to war at the head of his troops, who could 



80 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

handle the heaviest sword or battle-axe, who was 
both the ruler and judge of his people, belongs to 
a bygone era. His last raison d'etre passed with 
the era of industry and rapid transit. He became 
an anachronism when people began to realise that 
life is a gift to be wisely used, and that racial an- 
tagonisms may be cured or dispersed by close rela- 
tionship. It is for kings and for kings alone that 
millions of men who have no real quarrel have 
slaughtered one another under conditions of horror 
that make description inadequate. Until we under- 
stand that simple truth that the natural inclina- 
tion of civilised man is to live on friendly terms 
with his neighbour in spite of all divisions of bound- 
aries, whether of place, blood, or religion, civilisa- 
tion will be rendered null. Kings have ceased to 
represent their people ; the time has come when the 
people can represent themselves. 

Unhappily they do not yet recognise their own 
power, and nothing is farther from the wishes of 
Europe's tottering dynasties than that they should 
do so. Education, their first aid to emancipation, 
has been grudgingly conceded. Representation is 
in its infancy and is hedged round with so many 
safeguards to royalty that in many countries it is 
still struggling for effective existence. For all our 
brave talk Europe is still in its first youth, but the 
tragedy through which we are passing may yet 



THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 81 

serve to stimulate its growth as surely as the blood 
shed on its fields will yield return in the fruits of 
the earth. 

Will democracy rise from the conflict not only 
strong but determined? Will it carry destruction 
to the source of destruction? Will it assert its in- 
alienable right to the fruits of peace, progress, and 
utility? I pray that it may, but I do not disguise 
from myself the enormous difficulty of the task. 
Demos is yet so unskilled, so easily flattered, so 
readily deceived, he will be met by men who have 
all the traditions of humbug at their finger tips; 
indeed, these traditions are almost their sole inherit- 
ance and equipment. 

Yet, "all that a man hath will he give for his 
life," and the democrat will not only be fighting for 
his own but for his children's lives and for the well 
being of the human race. He will have faced death, 
and will have realised that though man may die but 
once, the condition of rule that makes war possible 
makes the doom recurrent with every generation. 
He should know that the old traditions of rule are 
in the melting pot, and though all the forces of re- 
action will labour to shape them again as of old, 
it is in his power, if it is in his will, to frustrate their 
action. 

The United States looks to have a voice in the 
making of peace. Doubtless it will do useful work, 



82 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

but I cannot conceive of any better task for the 
great republicans of to-day than to give the western 
world the lead that may help it most of all. Most 
of them have seen monarchies at their best and 
worst; all of them are patriots; they know what 
republicanism has done for their own fair land. 
Will they stand silent now while the western world 
is faced by the danger of the perpetuation of a 
regime that has little or nothing to justify it? If 
they do, they have missed the finest possible chance 
of spreading the light that shone upon them when 
the Declaration of Independence was signed one 
hundred and forty years ago. 

With the end of the war, if it .does not result in 
the hegemony of Germany, in which case liberty 
will be no more than a name, all manner of schemes 
for the regeneration of Europe will be afoot. Few, 
if any, will go to the root of the evils that have 
devastated Belgium, Poland, and a part of France. 
It is safe to say that the disposition to bring about 
sweeping reforms will not find ready expression. 
We are all too close to events over here, the bless- 
ing of a clear, serene outlook is denied us. The 
United States has stood far above the turmoil, it 
has seen more of the truth than has been visible to 
any combatant nation, it can survey the whole situ- 
ation sanely. 

It seems to me in these circumstances that the 



THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 83 

greatest republic of the world has a serious duty, 
a grave responsibility. It has thriven on a gigantic 
scale without patronage or privileged classes, with- 
out titles, without such honours as are merely hon- 
ours in name. Freed by the Atlantic from the 
domination of Europe, it has grown in power and 
given its citizens a life removed from the worst 
anxieties that beset the Continent. It knows what 
kingship in its absolute aspect has cost Europe, and 
it embraces within its wide domain the children 
of every European nation; they dwell side by side 
in peace and amity. The freedom enjoyed by the 
republic would not be bartered for the wealth of 
the world, for that freedom is the secret of its eter- 
nal youth, its boundless energy, its untrammelled 
progress. 

There are men in the States to-day, men I am 
proud to number among my friends, who might 
speak in due season the words that would encourage 
Europe in the only fight that can rightly engage 
all nations, the fight against the curse of kingship. 
We who know how much this fight is needed, who 
have seen in the great republic how it welds to- 
gether the most diverse faiths and nationalities, be- 
lieve that nothing but kingship divides man from 
man in Europe and fills every frontier line with the 
instruments of death. 

All the sympathy of the best elements in the 



84 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

United States is with suffering Europe to-day, but 
it cannot be expressed without the use of words that 
will sound harsh to some, impertinent to others, 
startling to all. Yet these words will not fall upon 
deaf ears. They will bring hope to many for whom 
the future is utterly dark, who believe that the 
forces of reaction will strive desperately to over- 
come democracy and that democracy needs prompt 
help if it is to survive. 

Granting that America has the right to be heard 
when the time comes for the re-establishment of 
peace, she has the right to deliver the message of 
her own hundred years of freedom. Is it too much 
to hope that she will rise to the height of this su- 
preme occasion? 

If she will not shrink from this duty, she will en- 
sure a victory beside which the ultimate conquest in 
this war will appear well-nigh insignificant. 



X 

woman's war work on the land 

The cry for woman's service on the land is one I 
endeavoured nearly twenty years ago to anticipate. 
It was at a time when the anxiety of girls to earn 
their own living was making itself manifest in every 
class, and when the wages paid to those who had 
broken away from the conventions of purely do- 
mestic life were miserably inadequate. I had heard 
how, in the Dominions overseas, English women 
had been forced to learn open-air duties as best 
they could, I had realised the natural instinct of 
many women for gardening, and I had no doubt 
that there would be some whose courage would not 
flinch from an experiment. Looking back to that 
season, I marvel at the progress feminism has 
wrought in the world. Then every development 
that was sought for men was in the case of woman 
taboo. The only thing that a girl might do in the 
garden without defying the conventions was the 
light job that could be accomplished without any 
fatigue. She might pluck roses; I have grave 

doubts as to whether she might plant or prune them. 

85 



86 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

She might eat celery, but the digging of a trench 
or the earthing-up of the plants would have been 
considered a most "unladylike" occupation. In 
fact, we suffered, as a sex, under the spell of that 
horrible word; life for women has not been nearly 
so futile since it was abolished. 

In the years when I began first to find that the 
urgency of social problems was a bar to the further 
serenity of life, I, like other inexperienced people 
with reform at their hearts, dreamed dreams and 
saw visions. I had seen at Easton and Warwick 
the women of the working classes enjoying the 
hard work of the garden and the fields ; I, too, had 
tried my hand, always to find that I was rewarded 
with a quickly renewed sense of the joy of life. 
Even when weather conditions were unfavourable, 
the rest after labour was in itself atonement for the 
toil — it was so unlike other rest. Then I began to 
see an England in which girls and young women, 
ceasing to be merely "ladylike," would be healthier, 
happier, and more useful than they had been in the 
years of which I could take count. I could not 
help realising that the desire for active physical ex- 
ercise could not be limited to one sex, save in obe- 
dience to a convention that ignored human needs. 
It seemed to me as though the truth would be ap- 
parent to everybody, that nobody who could lend a 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 87 

helping hand would withhold it. Naturally I was 
soon undeceived. 

I was assured that only the children of working 
farmers and labourers could possibly milk the dairy 
herd, that gardening work in many of its aspects 
would be beyond the limits of the capacity of the 
gently nurtured. The girl market gardener was 
voted an impossibility; as landscape gardener, I 
was assured, she could never compete with a man. 
Poultry-farming and stock-breeding were even 
voted indelicate! Household management, to en- 
able girls to take posts as housekeepers in public 
institutions or large private houses, was regarded 
as something to be acquired without training, and 
even the commercial side of farm management was 
vetoed as a study for girls, as though a well-man- 
aged farm would be the worse for a competent book- 
keeper because that book-keeper chanced to be a 
daughter instead of a son of the house. I could 
prolong the list of vetoes and taboos that were 
presented to me, but no useful service would be 
served in doing so. I am only concerned to remem- 
ber now — after nearly twenty years — that I was re- 
garded as an unpractical dreamer, and that, as I 
write, there are letters on my desk asking me if I 
cannot recommend lady gardeners and agricultur- 
ists of all descriptions. I cannot : they are all fully 
occupied. Many are at work in England, not a few 



88 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

are busy thousands of miles oversea — in Canada, 
Australia, and the United States. Think of the 
freedom and the fullness of their lives, never a taboo 
to stand between them and any sane development ! 
To-day I see a great expansion of woman's la- 
bours under the sun. The trouble is that the de- 
mand outstrips the supply. The public, whose 
apathy has given only a minimum of stimulus to 
the progress of the girl agriculturist, has become 
suddenly clamant. It demands the impossible. The 
girls' agricultural colleges are to improvise the 
highly trained, skilled article. It is as though they 
should demand the finished fruits of the orchard 
before the budding and flowering time of the trees 
has been fulfilled. I am hoping that this will not 
lead to a reaction, and that those whose demand for 
ready-made service brings inevitably unsatisfactory 
results will not regard woman's work in the light 
that their own thoughtlessness must shed upon it. 
Only those of us who understand the curriculum, 
and the time required to follow it to the appointed 
end, know that you must be thorough if you would 
be successful. All the ordinary problems of the 
open-air life must be faced in training before they 
can be overcome in the practice of daily life in farm 
and garden. To us this is a commonplace ; to those 
who do not know the land and its labor it comes as 
a surprise and an annoyance. 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 89 

I established the Hostel at Reading, near the 
great Agricultural College, in the year 1898, and 
it remained there for nearly four years, when the 
Reading premises began to prove inadequate to 
the purposes I had in view. Even when the ridicule 
ceased, the girls Had not been popular at Reading, 
where the college students thought that they were 
intruders if they ventured beyond the dairy. There 
were certain advantages. For example, the heads 
of the house of Sutton opened their gardens at 
stated times, and the girls could see the most skilled 
work in operation. But I could not help think- 
ing that, if the idea was to grow, it must have room 
and a congenial atmosphere for its development, 
and so it happened that the change was made. We 
moved to Studley Castle, in Warwickshire, sixteen 
miles from Birmingham, a rather modern place, 
with forty acres of gardens and pleasure grounds, 
wonderful out-buildings — built originally for rac- 
ing stables — and nearly two hundred and fifty acres 
of farm land, with woodlands and water in addition. 
In many respects this was the ideal place for the 
work in hand. There are other institutions of simi- 
lar kind in England to-day, and I am not claim- 
ing any special superiority for Studley. If I write 
of what is done there, it is merely because I know 
exactly what work is being carried on, and the full 
measure of success that attends it. Studley is now 



90 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

run by a limited liability company, in which I have 
no interest whatever. It differs from other agri- 
cultural colleges chiefly in the atmosphere, which is 
that of Girton or Newnham, and is deliberately 
preserved on grounds of economic policy. 

If our victory in the world-war is to have in it 
the elements of permanence, it can only be by the 
thorough equipment of those who go out into the 
world to contend with the most highly trained na- 
tion under the sun, and, as far as woman's educa- 
tion is concerned, in whatever aspect, it has the 
advantage denied to the education of boys — of be- 
ing free from old and paralysing conventions. 
There is nothing that must be done merely because 
it has been done from time immemorial, and the 
agricultural colleges have been modern from their 
inception. 

The first thing to be considered is so to train the 
students that they are able gradually to develop a 
measure of physical strength, and at the same time 
to teach them how to obtain a maximum of result 
from a minimum of effort. Many an untrained man 
could only accomplish with great exertion what a 
trained woman can do without difficulty. In a 
little while not only do the spade and the wheel- 
barrow lose all their terrors, but the comparatively 
light modern plough can be handled, even on fairly 
heavy land, without excessive fatigue. Then the 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 91 

balance must be preserved between practice and 
theory. You will remember that the method of 
combining the two is not new. Mr. Wackford 
Squeers taught it at Dotheboys Hall. "W-I-N- 
D-E-R, a casement. Now go and clean them." 
Perhaps this was the germ of the idea — who knows ? 
The lecturer in the college is supplemented by the 
expert in the field, dairy, and garden, and the stu- 
dent is not limited to the grounds of the institution, 
ample though they be. On outlying farms, in pri- 
vate gardens, market gardens, at country flower 
shows and exhibitions, the pupils of this and other 
colleges are expected to demonstrate their efficiency, 
thereby learning how the familiar problems may 
vary in their incidents and application. There is 
no element of secrecy. All that is taught and all 
that is learned is open to the inspection of the sec- 
tion of the public that is interested. The college 
has terms similar to those of school and university 
— thirty-nine weeks of work and thirteen of holi- 
day — and while girls are admitted as soon as their 
school education is finished, at the age of sixteen 
or thereabouts, women can join at any age. If they 
have the energy and determination, they are never 
too late to learn. For school-girls over twelve 
years of age who intend to take up agricultural 
or garden work when school days are over, there 
are holiday classes at which the 'prentice work 



92 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

may be studied under the most pleasant conditions 
possible. Most of the school-girls who take this 
course regard it as an ideal holiday. 

For the benefit of adults who desire a special 
study, short courses can be arranged at all times, 
but it is, of course, well understood that such 
courses do not make the student truly representa- 
tive of the college tuition. It has long been recog- 
nised that you cannot make agriculturists or hor- 
ticulturists in a hurry. The minimum period of 
complete study is two years, but the complete 
course that turns out the finished student is a full 
three years. It is in view of this hard truth that 
I have eyed askance the suggestion that a course 
that is to be practical can be crowded into three 
months. Such a term would hardly avail a genius. 
As far as I have been able to see, the not very 
considerable percentage of failures associated with 
agricultural colleges is due to the inability of stu- 
dents to distinguish between enthusiasm and stay- 
ing power. They have not realised that work must 
be done at every season and in nearly all weather, 
that the sun is not always shining, and that the 
novelty of association with Nature will wear away 
from all who are not Nature-lovers at heart and 
by instinct. That is why I am afraid of short- 
term training. Two or three years develop not 
only aptitude, but character; enthusiasms have 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 93 

time to take a fresh and long lease of life. Train- 
ing brings confidence too. Girls who wish to be 
gardeners, agriculturists, poultry-farmers, estate 
managers, and the rest, will do well to remember 
that the new or the modern methods they are 
taught in an up-to-date institution are not neces- 
sarily followed in the place where they get their 
first engagement. If they have to control men, 
they must expect to find a certain intolerance of 
change, a certain resentment of direction. Unless 
they are thoroughly sure of themselves they can- 
not supervise the work of others. 

What the student has to remember is that most 
of the methods she will find outside her training 
college are wasteful, obsolete, or second rate. Sci- 
entific training is unknown to the average gardener, 
market gardener, dairy-farmer, and poultry-keeper. 
Our old countryside is run on amasingly inept lines. 
Foolishness of any kind that has behind it the sanc- 
tion of a single generation is sacrosanct. If a father 
has farmed or gardened foolishly, that special man- 
ner of foolishness is sacred to his son. We have 
always relied upon "the foreigner." He sends us 
fruit, eggs, honey, vegetables, corn, cattle food; 
while the seas are open, we need never go hungry. 
I do not pretend that we can do without him for 
everything, but we can certainly do very much 
more in the future than we have done in the past, 



94 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

and we have been warned by our Government to 
do it. That is why I have so much hope for the 
future of the woman on the land. I feel that her 
work is no longer concerned with hobbies and pri- 
vate profit; henceforward it is, in effect, a kind of 
public service. The Government is avowedly anx- 
ious for the future of the land, frankly concerned 
to check the annual outlay of millions of pounds 
for foodstuffs that we are well able to raise at home. 
Why, for example, should we spend forty thou- 
sand pounds a year upon honey, to name what 
our American friends would call "a side line," 
when we have a wealth of flowers and fruit blossom 
that would not only yield all that is required, but 
would even enable us to substitute honey for much 
of the sugar that is only sold to us when it has been 
chemically treated to improve appearance at the 
expense of quality? Why must we gather eggs 
from the far ends of the earth, and bacon from 
countries where pigs are fed as they are said to 
be fed in China? When I think of the thousands 
of women who are ready, willing, and, if properly 
trained, able to take a hand in the great task of 
feeding the people, it seems to me that the seed I 
sowed in 1898, to the accompaniment of much 
amusement, derision, and hostile criticism, has 
grown into a very sturdy and healthy tree. I even 
venture to think that the fruits will be more refresh- 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 95 

ing than those of the Insurance Act itself. As far 
as the records I have been able to examine teach 
me, there have been very few failures to achieve 
success among the women who have taken reso- 
lutely and completely to this comparatively new 
walk in life. The students have done more than 
merely earn a comfortable living. They have been 
the disseminators of the new ideas, the modern 
theories of agriculture, horticulture, and apicul- 
ture, the introducers of order and method into 
realms where chaos ruled amiably and ineffectively. 
In many cases they have even succeeded so far as 
to disarm prejudice and to persuade omniscient man 
that a method is not good merely because it is cus- 
tomary or easy to follow. And what they have done 
is small by the side of what they may hope to do. 
What is needed just now, when the Government 
is really awake to the importance of woman's work 
on the land, is an extension of the agricultural col- 
leges and a series of State grants. At present the 
work is costly. The upkeep of a big institution is 
expensive, because you cannot treat the land pre- 
cisely as you would for utility farming. It is there 
to teach pupils, to carry out demonstrations. So 
it is with the glass, that is so costly to build and 
to heat. Then, again, professors — the best in the 
country — must be asked to lecture ; and while agri- 
cultural colleges are in the heart of the country, 



96 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the professors are probably living in distant uni- 
versity towns, so that their lectures are bound to 
be costly. Let us remember, too, quite frankly, 
that there is not much money for the girl who is 
not able to start a little establishment of her own 
or to go into partnership. There is a happy, 
healthy, useful life, there is valuable service, quite 
unrecorded, to the public at large, but the monetary 
reward is of the slightest and the training is long. 
It is necessary, then, in view of the growing de- 
mand for the work of woman's hands, that the Gov- 
ernment should make grants to the established col- 
leges as they make grants to other educational 
bodies, and it would be well if eveiy County Coun- 
cil that does not conduct an agricultural college 
of its own would give a few scholarships annually 
in the college nearest to its county town. These 
steps are needed to give an impetus to the work 
that is now being done. Had they been taken when 
first I pleaded for them, we should have been in 
quite a different position to-day. There would, 
at least, have been enough capable workers to meet 
the most pressing demands. At present they tell 
me that at Studley every post brings applications 
for gardeners and dairy workers, for women com- 
petent to train others, but there is not a single dis- 
engaged pupil. Doubtless a similar state of things 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 97 

obtains at the other colleges in Kent, Worcester- 
shire, Sussex, and elsewhere. 

It has been seen that properly trained women 
can do all the work of farm and garden. Even 
ploughing is not beyond them, save on very stiff 
clay soils. They are entirely successful in handling 
animals; horses, cows, bullocks, sheep, pigs, and 
goats are all tractable when cared for by women. 
They are taught at all well-conducted institutions 
to substitute knack for force, and they have, as is 
admitted on all hands, the right temperament for 
tasks that demand not only time, but patience. As 
beekeepers they do very well, the gift of delicate 
handling standing them in good stead, and in the 
glasshouses they are easily first. Dr. Hamilton, the 
energetic and gifted Warden of Studley, tells me 
that she finds that the health of girls engaged upon 
the land, whether in the garden or on the farm, 
is good, and that many who arrive at the College 
in a delicate state of health grow very much 
stronger. She finds that the work makes women 
not only healthy, but happy — presumably because 
happiness is largely a product of good health. 

Perhaps the needs of the country will be the de- 
termining factor in sending women to the land in 
the summer-times before us; but we may take it 
for granted that one of the results of war will be 
the large extension of the realm of the woman- 



98~ A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

worker of the field and garden. We cannot shut 
our eyes to the sad truth that there will be war 
widows in their thousands, and countless girls whose 
chances of married happiness have been destroyed. 
To many of these the land will supply the only ano- 
dyne that life has to offer. In hard work and the 
open air they will learn to forget; in the develop- 
ment of garden, or farm, or orchard they will find 
something to interest them. With their advent we 
may look to find a great addition to the national 
food supply, a great saving of money that has 
gone hitherto across the Channel or the Atlantic 
Ocean. 

I am inclined to think that women are more 
likely than men to take advantage of the homeland 
opportunities. Men who have lived strenuously and 
dangerously may not be found content with a hand- 
ful of acres and a cartload of restrictions at home, 
when the far-flung Dominions overseas have so 
much more with which to tempt them. I see that 
Sir Harry Verney's Committee, appointed to con- 
sider the question of land settlement for soldiers 
and sailors, suggested holdings of twenty-five acres 
for dairy-farming, and four-acre holdings for pigs, 
poultry, fruit, etc. These last are to cost £24 per 
annum. Consider as against this the one hundred 
and sixty acre grant of the Canadian Government, 
the additions made by the Canadian Pacific Rail- 



WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 99 

way and, perhaps, other great corporations, 
whereby a settler finds a house, farm buildings, fifty 
acres broken up and planted with wheat. There 
the rent is part payment of the purchase price. 
I do not think the Government is going to hold sol- 
diers and sailors with anything Sir Harry Verney 
and his committee-men propose to offer, but I do 
think that if the Govermnent will make a like offer 
to the women of England, and will arrange to do 
for them what it proposes to do for the men, this 
latest scheme of small holdings might well be a suc- 
cess. Women could and would make an agricul- 
tural colony. They delight in doing small things 
well; they are frugal and temperate; they can 
make much out of very little. Whatever their war 
experiences and suffering, it will not have developed 
in them the spirit of unrest. Their ambitions do 
not seek the particular kind of achievement that 
appeals most to men; they find happiness where a 
man might find boredom. They love the sense of 
independence, the freedom and simplicity that coun- 
try life affords and enjoins. 

Above all else that concerns woman's career on 
the land, it has clearly been shown now that in 
times of crisis the men who work on the land may 
be called away, and our home food supplies may 
be jeopardised by their absence. In these circum- 
stances the movement must spread. The flower 



100 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

and market garden, the field, the conservatory, and 
the outhouse must be recognised as providing a 
pleasant sphere of activity for girls and women, and 
there is more than enough land in these islands to 
provide small holdings for many years to come for 
all who have the will and the capacity to develop 
them. In conclusion, let me utter a warning that 
demands the attention of all who love their coun- 
try. At the present time we only produce about 
twenty per cent, of the food we eat. For the rest 
we depend upon our mercantile marine and our 
power to hold, not only the seas, but the skies above 
and the depths beneath. Without any comment, it 
seems to me that this simple and undeniable state- 
ment should suffice to settle the career of many a 
sturdy country-loving English girl. 



XI 

GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 

Reading the record of Germany's war methods, 
even those of us who are endeavouring to think 
sanely through these evil days must be impressed 
by the overwhelming evidence of their complete 
ruthlessness. 

We who have travelled in Germany not once, but 
many times, know full well that harshness and 
cruelty are not associated with the majority. There 
are countless Germans who could only be cruel in 
obedience to orders, and, of course, every German 
will do what he is told, just as the Children of Israel 
did when Joshua, who appears to have invented 
"f rightfulness," was carrying out his merciless cam- 
paign. If we admit that the simple German of 
the south is not cruel at heart, that he is rather a 
dreamer and a sentimentalist with strong love for 
domestic pleasures, we find that the policy of 
"f rightfulness" must be ascribed to the military 
party, consisting for the most part of Prussians, 
with headquarters in Berlin. 

These men are the organisers of war, and speak 

101 



102 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

through the mouths of writers like Treitschke, 
Bernhardt, and the rest. It is they who have torn 
up the treaties and conventions that were, humanity- 
hoped, to decide the conduct of war. They are re- 
sponsible for the curious outburst of national ha- 
tred against this country that is at once so star- 
tling and so silly, a revelation of the sad truth 
that Germany is suffering from neurosis. 

I have been trying to trace "f rightfulness" to its 
source, not through the medium of books or papers, 
but in the light of my own knowledge of the coun- 
try and my past acquaintance with some of its 
leading men, and I think that the philosophic his- 
torian of the times to come, whose vision is not 
obscured by the smoke of battle or the fury of com- 
batants, will not hesitate to declare that the worst 
and saddest features of war as waged by the Ger- 
mans are due to the fact that in their country 
women are kept more in the background than in the 
country of any other great Power. 

The fault, as I will point out later on, is not that 
of the women, but of the leaders of German fac- 
tion who have deliberately suppressed woman, and 
of nearly all the leaders of German thought who, 
being dependent on Government favour, have sub- 
scribed to their policy of deliberate suppression. 
Here and there an independent thinker has arisen 
nearly always from the ranks of Social Democracy. 



GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 103 

Bebel's book on women, for example, is a standard 
work, but the few lights do no more than emphasise 
the surrounding darkness. 

Look round Europe for a moment. Russia is a 
backward empire and the spirit of progress moves 
over it with slow feet, but Russia is making vast 
strides, and the plough that will trace deep fur- 
rows in the virgin soil of its social life is drawn 
by man and woman together. All the professions 
are open to women, even those in which women are 
not found here. The Russian engineer who planned 
the newest bridge over the Neva was a woman. 
Men and women students work side by side on 
terms of absolute equality, and compete for honours 
that often fall to the gentler sex. 

Russian women of the educated classes are more 
than merely well informed, they are brilliant. Lin- 
guists, women of affairs, they have a grip of ac- 
tualities of the empire of which they form a sig- 
nificant part. In spite of autocratic rule and lim- 
ited freedom there is such a full life for the Russian 
woman as her German sister has never known, ex- 
cept in dreams of emancipation. In Finland, be 
it remembered, women sit in Parliament. 

Turn to France, and it may be declared emphati- 
cally that woman rules. Women are doctors, bar- 
risters, and scientists; they are members of the 
Goncourt Academy; they are the heads of some 



104 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

of the most important business institutions; they 
give the most exclusive salons their distinction. 
Public opinion is moulded by them ; their influence 
makes and breaks Cabinets. Feminism is one of the 
strongest forces in France. Quiescent to-day or 
working in quietness, this force will dominate a 
France released from war. 

Even in Belgium, of whose progress we hear lit- 
tle, women have been largely responsible for the 
organisation of the middle and working classes, an 
organisation that was well-nigh complete before 
war broke out, and in the slow rebuilding that is 
to come we may look with confidence to the Belgian 
woman to play a leading role. Turn to a group of 
neutral countries — Denmark, Norway, Sweden — 
and it will be seen that feminism is moving with 
vast strides along the path of national progress. 
Woman is asserting herself in all of them, con- 
tributing her thought to her country's problems, 
taking an ever important place in its councils. 

Alone of the great Powers Germany has elected 
to forget or to disregard as a negligible quantity 
the opinion of woman, and the reason is not far 
to seek. For years past the German has forgotten 
the respect and reverence he owes to his own 
womenfolk. Kuche, Kinder, Kirche — he calls al- 
literation to his aid to express a growing contempt 
for the sex and the narrowest possible view of its 



GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 105 

world function. Intoxicated with the vision of im- 
perial domination, he has regarded his own sex 
as the one motive force in the universe. 

He has not watched the slow awakening of 
women in the countries around him; he has not 
noted how bonds of sympathy, light as gossamer, 
yet strong as steel, have stretched from country to 
country, binding our sex in a large and ever widen- 
ing sisterhood, inarticulate now, or at least hardly 
coherent, but only waiting for their appointed hour 
to assume a fuller share of the glories, the burdens 
and the responsibilities of life. Woman's influ- 
ence, silent, world-wide, pervasive, has been treated 
by the evangels of Kultur as though it were non- 
existent, and in the hour of crisis woman as a united 
force has avenged herself for years of neglect, 
scorn and brutality. She is everywhere a bellig- 
erent. 

I do not know the country in Europe where 
women are treated as they are in Germany. Not 
many countries can vie with the United States in 
the attention bestowed upon the gentler sex, but 
as I have endeavoured to show, they are respected 
more in every belligerent country than they are in 
the one that sought to rest supreme in Europe. 
Even in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, where women 
must often work as hard as men, they stand upon 
a secure footing of affection and respect. The 



106 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

smaller courtesies, the greater services of life are 
theirs. In some definite measure they complete 
the home. But you cannot bring an indictment 
against a whole nation, and I do not seek to do so. 

In tens of thousands of German homes the wife 
and daughters are loved and honoured, but in the 
rank and file of military circles, even among the 
men who hold official positions and boast a certain 
standing, woman has been dethroned — she is re- 
garded as an incumbrance necessary for the produc- 
tion of further generations of supermen, who shall 
inherit the earth. This attitude of mind reveals 
itself in the action that speaks louder than words. 
The toleration and the contempt to which I refer 
are everywhere apparent. No good-looking woman 
is safe in Germany from the ill-bred stares and 
comments of the men with whom she must travel 
in train or tram. 

If women enter a theatre or restaurant their 
own friends and relatives do not rise to receive 
them. They are liable to be elbowed into the road 
if men walking abreast can occupy the whole of 
the pavement. The politeness of the few cultured 
Germans (pardon the discredited adjective) merely 
emphasises the boorishness of the vast majority. It 
might be that the German is waiting for women 
to be officially recognised as human beings to whom 
some measure of courtesy or even decency is due. 



GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 107 

Only when rudeness is "verboten" will rudeness 
cease. 

The country is governed by men for men and 
women, but according to the marriage rubric 
woman is actually man's servant. The effect of 
these conditions upon the morals of the country is 
deplorable. They give a cachet to vices, even the 
most odious, and the rate of illegitimacy, about 10 
per cent, for the whole empire, is about doubled in 
Berlin, where the military caste is supreme. The 
morals of the army are the morals of Berlin, and 
account not only for the hideous stories published 
about what took place in Belgium and northern 
France, but for the recitals not less appalling that 
one gathers from officers home on leave who have 
seen sights in the area of German occupation that 
cannot be set down in print. 

Undoubtedly these recitals, if they could reach 
the heart of Germany, would thrill tens of thou- 
sands of honest men with indignation and disgust. 
I do not believe for a moment that they represent 
the inclinations of the whole nation. They are 
rather the action of that section of the nation which, 
while war endures, must have the upper hand, and 
during all the years of war-like preparations has 
reigned supreme. Against this aspect of German 
national life the women of belligerent and neutral 
countries alike are arrayed. Whatever their re- 



108 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

sources or their influence in the councils of their 
husbands, sons, and brothers, it will be devoted with- 
out cease to the destruction of a militarism that 
degrades and shames womankind. The German 
woman knows in her heart that her men have in 
countless instances become perverts, but she is 
dumb because she is forbidden to speak. In Prus- 
sia no woman may organise a union that has politi- 
cal aims; she may not even join one. 

It is the purpose of the dominant caste to keep 
woman in subjection, to restrict her activities to 
the kitchen, the cradle and the Church, even to deny 
her the mental and the physical development that 
might tend to lead her to revolt. Woman may 
find a limited salvation in the conduct of a busi- 
ness ; throughout the German Empire not far short 
of a million women conduct commercial enterprises 
of one kind or another, and collectively they strive 
with some success to better the physical and moral 
conditions under which their sisters live. No ef- 
fort of which they have yet been capable has ac- 
complished more than this, their condition of tute- 
lage remains complete. 

I do not pretend to be satisfied with the posi- 
tion of women in England: far from it; but here, 
as in the countries already enumerated, it is bet- 
ter far than in Germany. Women mould public 
opinion to an appreciable extent; they are able 



GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 109 

to modify the life of their sex in many important 
particulars, the best of them exercise sane influ- 
ence, and all are sufficiently well treated to estab- 
lish a definite attitude of mind in men. We know 
that no British or French troops would behave in 
Germany as Germans behaved in Belgium; we 
know that the honour of honourable women and 
of helpless children would be safe in the keeping 
of the French and British officer, and that he would 
not be called upon to restrain his men from acts 
of lust and savagery. 

We know that there is a public opinion the wide 
world over among free women and women strug- 
gling to be free that will not submit to the domina- 
tion of any race that does not hold woman in re- 
spect. It is on this account, in my opinion, that 
the unbridled and tolerated savagery of the worst 
class of German conscript in Belgium and France 
has cost Germany more than the loss of half a 
dozen pitched battles. Whatever the irritation 
caused by the incidents of the war, the Allies know 
that women the world over are and will remain on 
their side, for the hegemony of a nation that treats 
women in peace with contempt and in war with 
"frightfulness" cannot be contemplated by our sex. 
We know that in fighting for the cause of the Al- 
lies we are fighting for the most downtrodden of 
the highly civilised women in Europe. At pres- 



110 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

ent they would resent our aid — they are patriotic 
— they have suffered terribly, and in the hour of 
their trials they mourn and forgive those who 
treated them ill. 

Later on, when peace returns, when the world 
is purged of violence and its wounds begin their 
slow and painful process of healing, the German 
women will recognise that we have been fighting 
for a larger cause than our own; that we helped 
to force the doors that have remained barred so 
long and to break the chains that bound the women 
of a great but erring nation. Only the ultimate 
triumph of the Allies can free the women of Ger- 
many, and in time they will realise the truth. 

The views of the wisest men are narrow, and 
few among them will realise or admit even now 
the truth that woman is now a factor in the world's 
affairs. When this war is over we shall tell in no 
uncertain words what is in our hearts. At present 
we must needs be silent. If those dreamers of 
world empire had but remembered that women, too, 
have minds and are learning to use them, the story 
of the great world tragedy, even if it had to be 
set down, would have been widely different in many 
of its incidents. 

It was Germany's fatal mistake that, not con- 
tent with dominating its own womankind and sup- 
pressing them whenever and wherever possible, it 



GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 111 

believed that the rest of the world was equally in- 
different to the treatment of its mothers, wives, and 
daughters. 

Every known outrage has raised fresh fighters, 
has strengthened the Allies with the sure force of 
moral sympathy and encouragement, has thinned 
the ranks of those whose sympathies were with a 
country whose marvellous progress provides so 
much material for admiration. Who can measure 
the responsibility of those guides and teachers who 
taught the German to develop along material lines 
and to forget that woman is the proper spiritual 
guide, and that as man loves and reverences her he 
sees farther and deeper into the heart of things 
— sees life sanely and sees it whole? 

Whatever the limitations of our knowledge we 
know that the one sex completes the other; that 
man enlarges the vision of woman and woman en- 
larges the vision of man, and that it is the pe- 
culiar gift of our sex to control man's passions, 
to stimulate his humanity, to direct his ambitions 
away from dangerous paths. We do not all strive 
as we might; we do not always succeed as we de- 
serve, but man is woefully incomplete without us, 
and the spectacle of a nation that has despised 
womanhood waging war shows that this contempt 
corrodes his moral fibre, leaves him at the mercy 
of his worst instincts and raises up against him 



112 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

all the spiritual forces against which none may 
strive victoriously. 

We women who have never handled weapons, 
whose only place in the area of strife is among the 
maimed and helpless, know even better than men 
that the race is not always to the swift nor the 
battle to the strong. When history has recorded 
the story of the world war that darkens our lives 
to-day, future generations will ask how it was 
that Germany could find no friends among the 
neutral nations. Her Ambassadors, official and 
unofficial, her publicists and those of neutral coun- 
tries who were not ashamed to accept her subsidies, 
worked with true German thoroughness. Truth 
was never allowed to stand in the way of propa- 
ganda. No lie that might serve a useful purpose 
went unsanctioned, for the great end was to sanc- 
tify all means, however vile, and yet in the hour 
when even moral support and silent sympathy 
would have been of the greatest value, Germany 
looked for it in vain. 

It was easy to declare that the whole world was 
jealous and misinformed; such an excuse could 
hardly deceive the responsible people who fathered 
it. My own view is that the women of Europe 
and the United States turned against Germany 
when the manner in which she waged war was first 
revealed to a disgusted world. Their hostility was 



GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 113 

not merely sentimental — it was psychological. The 
German attitude toward women, already ques- 
tioned, was revealed as in the glare of searchlight, 
and womanhood from London to Petrograd and 
from Copenhagen to New York was completely, 
irrevocably antagonised. 



XII 

YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 

It becomes increasingly difficult to speak one's 
mind in England to-day, even though one has no 
peace scheme to propound and no efficient public 
servant to criticise. 

Liberty has vacated her throne, or as much of 
it as Privilege would ever allow her to occupy, 
and the Defence of the Realm Act has taken her 
place. 

Consequently it is very hard to express opinions 
unless they are sufficiently platitudinous to gain 
universal and immediate acceptance. Roughly 
speaking we are all of one mind about the conduct 
of this war; the minority in opposition is so small 
that it can be disregarded, but we are all at vari- 
ance as to method, and on the Ship of State that 
steers such an erratic course through the hurri- 
cane of strife there is hardly a passenger who is 
not convinced that he could reach the goal much 
more rapidly than the man at the wheel is likely to. 

Those who criticise the steering are suspect, for 
the national temper is a little upset, our situation 

114 



YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 115 

is without precedent, and an Englishman dislikes 
novelty. I cannot help my belief that it is the nov- 
elty rather than the tragedy of the hour that 
troubles him most. He is giving, to the best of his 
capacity, blood, labour, treasure, but he is not 
thinking as deeply as he should, perhaps because 
he understands that when you begin to think and 
believe you see a great truth clearly, you are 
morally bound to communicate that truth to others. 
Then the Defence of the Realm comes in and you 
are likely to be hailed a traitor to all good causes 
by the first person who — with or without under- 
standing your views — disagrees with them ! 

Yet for all the prejudices with which the ex- 
pression of opinion is beset, it is hard to keep silent 
when something presents itself to the mind in the 
guise of a vital truth, and now, after more than 
two years of war have forced reflection and taught 
us to see the world tragedy as a whole, there are 
things that must needs be said, protests that must 
needs be made. 

Of all the iniquities that are associated with war, 
war as distinct from murder I would add, there 
is nothing quite so horrible as the sacrifice of young 
life. It is common to all the nations at war. We 
read of boys of fifteen fighting in the ranks of our 
enemies, and, at home, of boys who have added a 
year or two to their proper age to deceive a not 



116 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

too inquisitive recruiting sergeant. To raw lads 
in their utter ignorance, war is a great joy and 
adventure; they are proud to help their country 
and to be redeemed from the charge of being "slack- 
ers." So when the cup of life is hardly at their 
lips they go, some to die, some to be maimed, some 
to return prematurely old and broken down. 

While the plots and counter plots that made for 
war were being hatched, these young warriors were 
in the nursery, or at school. Even now they have 
reached no perception of the real forces for which 
men strive ; until war broke out their lives were still 
supposed to be under the protection of their 
parents. 

But as soon as the State is beset it calls for aid, 
not alone upon matured men, who understand and 
have a sense of responsibility, but upon the lads 
whom it ought to be protecting as the one irre- 
placeable asset of the next generation. 

Wise old gentlemen with a very tolerable imi- 
tation of the spirit of prophecy in their hearts, pens 
in their hands, and bees in their bonnets, wrote in- 
dignant articles in the best read organs of the press 
that our downfall, if we did not introduce conscrip- 
tion, is merely a matter of months. Sometimes it 
was weeks. The time given to us varied accord- 
ing to the measure of the writers' chronic dyspepsia. 

Yet if these people would only think, they would 



YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 117 

have little difficulty in admitting that the lads who 
have been well educated, well trained and pre- 
pared with infinite labour for life are just those who 
should not be surrendered to death under any nor- 
mal conditions until they have fulfilled their pri- 
mary function toward the State. 

I will go farther and suggest that their elders 
have no right to rob them of the few years in 
which they taste the joys of life. I was told re- 
cently by a man who knew what he was talking 
about that under the Mosaic Code the Jews did not 
allow their married men to go to war until they 
had spent one year with their wives. A man who 
was betrothed was instructed to marry, and even 
if a man married a second time he had to remain 
for one year at home. In this way the continuity 
of the race was assured and the Jews, eminently 
a fighting nation, preserved their virility. 

There was no question of sentiment involved — 
it was hard, common sense applied to war. And, 
horrible irony, the British Government recognises 
the simple truth, but has only learned down to 
the present to apply it to farm stock. I saw last 
year a printed notice in the country post-offices 
issued to farmers by the Board of Agriculture, tell- 
ing them not to kill lamb and veal because what- 
ever the price offered the removal of immature 



118 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

stock is dangerous wastefulness which the coun- 
try cannot afford. 

Here is a copy of the notice: 

BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES 



Special Notice to Farmers 



Preserve our Flocks and Herds ! 
Maintain our Meat Supply! 



The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries strongly urge 
all Farmers to raise as much stock as possible during 
the war. 

Their advice to you is: 

Do not send breeding and immature stock to the 
Butcher simply because prices are attractive now. 

Do not Market half-finished animals ; it is wasteful of 
the country's resources and is against your own interests. 

Do not kill Calves — rear them ; it is well worth it. 

Do not reduce your stock; when you cannot buy 
stores, buy calves. 

Maintain your flocks and breed your sows ; it will pay 
you to do so. 

The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries make the above 
recommendations not only for the National Welfare 
but because they believe them to be for the ultimate bene- 
fit of British Agriculture. 

It seems almost too ridiculous to be true that the 
Government has more concern for lambs or calves 



YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 119 

than for boys on the threshold of manhood, but 
the facts convict them. 

For myself I would rather see a thousand of the 
bloodthirsty old gentlemen who preached conscrip- 
tion sent to the front from their club smoke-rooms 
and editorial chairs, than five hundred lads from 
whom their country has something to expect! 

I do not think I am a sentimentalist, certainly 
I do not plead for the exemption of mere boys 
from the battlefield in order that they may have 
what is called a good time, though I hold that they 
should not be deprived deliberately of the few 
halcyon years that are in one fashion or another 
the reward of one and all. I would work them 
to the last ounce of their capacity in seasons like 
these. They should have long hours, Spartan fare, 
and spells of physical drill, they should put in 
eight hours of labour for the Government in the 
factory, in the munition works, wherever their ser- 
vices could be best employed. 

They might be under military rule, amenable to 
the same discipline as the soldier, but they should 
not go into the firing line, because they belong to 
the next generation. 

They are to sire it ; no nation can afford to leave 
that responsibility to the physically unfit, and to 
those who have passed fighting age. 

This duty done, they would be free to join the 



120 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

fighting forces for which their drill, their labour 
and their self-denial would have prepared them. 
My soldier relatives and friends tell me that the 
lad in his teens is of little value in a prolonged cam- 
paign. He may have all the necessary courage, but 
he lacks the essential stamina. He is fitter to march 
and endure when he is twenty-five than when he is 
nineteen, fitter still at thirty. 

But, asks my critic, where will you recruit your 
fighting men? I look round at my men friends, 
and I find them, up to the age of fifty, taking their 
chance in the forefront of things. The outcry 
against the married man as combatant is valid only 
in so far as his family depends upon him for sup- 
port. My friends chance for the greater part to 
belong to the comfortable classes. They have en- 
joyed the best that England has to offer; they are 
prepared to pay the price, with their lives if need 
be. Above all they are articulate, they have the 
franchise, they can speak their mind. Collectively 
they support in one form and another the condi- 
tions that make war possible. They are conscious 
of a certain responsibility. 

Where, for example, on the other hand, is the 
responsibility of the midshipman on the torpedoed 
battleship ? I take his bravery for granted. I am 
quite convinced that could he read my plea he would 
disavow any shadow of sympathy with it, but I am 



YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 121 

concerned for the country and not for him. He 
has a duty toward civilisation, he is well-bred, 
highly trained, efficient. I say that the State owes 
him at least a few years of manhood and should 
see that he is allowed to reach maturity, although 
he is neither veal nor lamb! 

It is false economy that raises the outcry against 
married men as soldiers. They alone in the com- 
munity can be spared, they have fulfilled, or partly 
fulfilled, the function upon which civilisation de- 
pends. Potentially, if not always actually, they are 
fathers. Economists insist that pensions and al- 
lowances are an extravagance that the nation cannot 
afford. I reply that war is a still greater extrava- 
gance, the wickedest form of indulgence known to 
mankind, and that worse than war is the destruc- 
tion of the fairest hopes of the future, the race to 
come. Again, if those who light the fire were com- 
pelled to feed the flames I believe there would be 
fewer conflagrations. 

I feel that I do but set down facts that are known 
to thinkers, who, as a rule, prefer to keep silence 
at times like these lest their patriotism be suspect. 
After the war they will deplore the ruin; trustees 
for the generation to come, they will see that they 
have failed in their trust. They will shift the re- 
sponsibility on to the nature of things, they will 
declare that war was inevitable and that destruction 



122 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

of all we hold most dear must follow in its wake. 

Here I join issue with them. The world is for 
all practical purposes ruled by mankind. Nothing 
but the catastrophes like the tidal wave and the 
earthquake escape man's control. Famine, disease, 
and mortality he can arrest ; he can increase his stat- 
ure morally, mentally, physically. If he elect to 
play the prodigal he does so at his own risk, but 
he has no right to tamper with the vital resources 
of the generations that must follow. War is de- 
lirium, or he would bear this fundamental truth 
in mind. I think it has escaped him. He is im- 
mersed in the pursuit of the end, and no means 
are spared. Thus we hear the outcries because the 
fat money bags are growing thin, but nothing is 
said of the great asset that no trading, however suc- 
cessful, can restore. 

We can find in some barbarous land wealth only 
comparable to that which Sindbad discovered in the 
Valley of Diamonds, but what will that profit a 
race that must depend upon old and exhausted stock 
to renew its vitality? The desire for wealth is at 
least one of the contributory causes of war, the 
thought of wealth wasted makes men forget they 
are wasting what no wealth can replace. 

I am sure that women feel this eternal truth 
in their hearts, but all too many fear to be thought 
afraid. They fear their own mankind, those for 



YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 123 

whom they would gladly sacrifice all that life holds 
for them of good. They fear to be thought jealous 
for their own boys, while if the truth be told their 
fear is all for the young sons of all women quite 
irrespective of nationality. At least this is how 
the situation appeals to me, and I dare not keep 
silent if there be any medium of appeal to those 
who think with me that will set my thoughts down. 
There is a slumbering conscience of humanity only 
waiting the call that will break through its dreams. 
I am not so bold as to believe that I can utter it, 
but I may perchance stimulate some more gifted 
pen. 

In any case, I cannot hide my thoughts merely 
because they may meet no response, for after all 
there is not in all the world a single great belief 
that was not once the unregarded possession of a 
single mind. 



XIII 

THOUGHTS ON COMPULSION 

While I am firmly opposed to conscription in any 
form that does not embrace national wealth and 
resources as well as men, or that singles out one 
class of men to the exclusion of others, while I 
believe that, even subject to this view of national 
obligation, conscription should be treated as a war 
measure and blotted out of the statute book in the 
month that sees the restoration of peace, I am not 
writing to protest or to complain. We are told 
that every cloud has its silver lining, and when the 
Government decided to demand the services of 
those unmarried men who, far more by reason of 
apathy than cowardice, had remained to be taken, 
I could not help thinking that much good might 
come of it. Against the hideous doctrine that the 
end justifies the means we may set the equally old 
saying that necessity knows no law, and against the 
compulsory making of soldiers which is an evil, I 
set the waking of the national consciousness, and 
that is a gain. 

For centuries England led the vanguard of the 

124 



THOUGHTS ON COMPULSION 125 

workers for freedom. Against the will of the peo- 
ple the power of the great barons and of their Kings 
bent and broke. There were generations in which 
the people as a people were articulate, they stood 
up for their rights and privileges and were a force 
that few dared defy. The discovery of steam, the 
growth of factories, the increase of population and 
the struggle for life combined to make a large sec- 
tion of the working classes helpless. The hideous 
poverty and ugliness of life in the great centres 
of wealth drove men, and women too, to shut out 
the ugliness of their lives with the aid of brief spells 
of dissipation. Strong drink became alike a source 
of revenue to the country, a source of "honours" — 
generally paid for in hard cash — to the prosperous 
brewer and distiller, and the source of brief forget- 
fulness, misery, disease, crime and savage punish- 
ment to those who sought its dangerous solace. 
National expenditure and party funds alike clam- 
oured for the maintenance of the evil, and those 
who are most concerned with what is euphemis- 
tically called "keeping the working classes in their 
places" turned a deaf ear to schemes that sought 
to make the places of leisure for the worker more 
attractive and less dangerous. Pure Beer Bills and 
legislation to restrict the sale of spirits to such spirit 
as is matured, met with no effective support. Give 
the worker the nineteenth and twentieth century 



126 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

substitutes for his old time panem et circenses and 
he would continue until strength failed him to sow 
that others might reap and to earn the opprobrium 
and contempt of those he enriched. 

Parliament, immersed in politics to the exclusion 
of government, cared little for the real welfare of 
the people. It contrived by skilful electioneering 
to stimulate their interests in things that do not 
matter, and when they were not wanted at the 
polls their representatives — save the mark — left 
them severely alone. So it happened, as time 
passed, that the old interest in vital questions was 
passing from a large section of the proletariat. 
Powerful through the medium of their Unions they 
supported these great organisations for little bet- 
ter than the right to live. It was so hard to im- 
prove the conditions of a trade or a group of al- 
lied industries that the effort to this end left them 
with no energies to enter into larger fields. Those 
leaders of the people who have the gift of clear 
vision could meet with no adequate response, they 
alone could see the wood, their followers had their 
gaze riveted on one particular tree. England 
tended more and more to become the paradise of the 
capitalist and the purgatory of the working man, 
and because he was always protesting against con- 
ditions that will fill future generations with wonder 
and shame, conditions improved beyond recogni- 



THOUGHTS ON COMPULSION 127 

tion by the country with which we are now engaged 
in a life-and-death struggle, it became the prac- 
tice of the comfortable classes to denounce the 
workman and all his ambitions. He was, in their 
view, sent into this world to create wealth, not 
to enjoy what it creates; that was the privilege of 
his betters. The Englishman's natural sense of fair 
play has been obscured by the newspapers that 
pander to him and give him all his thoughts ready 
made; if anybody thinks this is an extreme state- 
ment, let him turn to the files of the reactionary 
press from the time when John Burns led the Dock- 
ers' Strike down to the outbreak of war (and since) 
and see whether he can find anywhere a solitary 
favourable verdict for the worker as against the 
employer. He will search in vain. 

There is a certain psychological aspect of the 
labour question that has, I think, been overlooked. 
A generation or two of oppressive conditions tends 
to produce a race that loses national consciousness. 
The worker learns to take the view that he is no 
longer a part of Great Britain, that his interests 
are exclusively personal, like those of his employers, 
that he has no status in the country and that his 
business is to get the most tolerable conditions of 
life that he can secure by combination and agita- 
tion, and to ignore the trend of politics, religion, 
social progress, and the rest of the life forces of 



128 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

civilisation. He knows himself for one who hews 
wood and draws water, it suffices him to carry a 
minimum of logs to the pile and buckets from the 
spring. He knows that there is for him no glimpse 
of the larger life and that because he is collectively 
a multitude there will be keen competition to bat- 
ten on his small savings or surpluses. He has the 
feeling that if he loses his job he will take his place 
in the ranks of a submerged tenth, ranks easy to 
slip into, almost impossible to rise from. My long 
intercourse with those who fast that others may 
feast has revealed this attitude to me in a hundred 
shapes, all tragic, some dangerous. It has been 
the despair of those who are working for the people 
and know that if they would but combine to grasp 
the sorry state of things environing them they could 
"shatter it to pieces and remould it nearer to the 
heart's desire." Unhappily it is impossible to fight 
what is called vis inerticE, you cannot bruise a 
feather pillow or hurt a sack of sand by striking it, 
and while long hours, scanty holidays, mean pleas- 
ures and continual anxiety dogged the footsteps of 
the working classes, it seemed impossible to secure 
the unity of action, the collective wisdom that would 
not only enable labour to find its place in the sun, 
but would destroy the parasites that thrive upon 
it. I think that the careful observer who noted 
the social condition of England down to the late 



THOUGHTS ON COMPULSION 129 

summer of 1914 will be disposed to agree that I 
have not overstated the ease or put the ugly light- 
ing unfairly on the foreground of the picture. 

Then came war with its strange, unmistakable 
revelation to the working man and working woman. 
In the blinding light born of battle they saw their 
country assaulted by an enemy completely trained 
and organised. Women saw that their own rulers 
had been too immersed in the great games of party 
politics and business development to give proper 
thought for the safety of the country. They saw, 
too, that the limitations of capitalism and capitalist 
were visible in the eyes of the world. They could 
help, they could leaven the dough of profit-making 
with the yeast of personal sacrifice, some have done 
so, but for the salvation of the country they ap- 
pealed to the working man. Government adopted 
some of his own panaceas, they accepted schemes of 
pure socialism as props for the pillars of the State, 
they taxed riches and laid sacrilegious hands upon 
the Dagon of wealth to the infinite rage of certain 
Philistines who are still grieving for the god's lost 
hands and feet, but it was to the working classes 
Government turned in the hour of their distress, 
and Labour responded nobly. Those into whose 
souls the iron of corruption, disappointment and 
indifference had not entered, set themselves to la- 
bour seven days a week for long hours in evil at- 



130 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

mosphere, or left their sweethearts and wives to 
strike a blow for the country that had displayed 
to them more of the qualities of a step-mother than 
a mother. Many have laid down their lives, and 
in the hearts of those who survive national con- 
sciousness has been re-born. 

The democratic comradeship of the battlefield, 
embracing all classes, has taught the working man 
that his foe in times of peace is not so much the 
class whose representatives are of his own blood 
brotherhood, but the system that dominates those 
who serve and those who accept service. This les- 
son learned exclusively on the fields of war will 
permeate the factories when war is over. One 
stumbling-block to progress remained. It was, I* 
venture to say, the presence in our midst of hun- 
dreds of thousands of men who have been rendered 
listless and apathetic by life conditions too easy 
or too hard. Now compulsion has reached this 
class it will give them in return for unsought risks 
and labour a sense of their place in the body politic. 
It will teach them that whether they will or no 
they have a part to play in shaping the destinies 
of Great Britain and that the reward will be in 
proportion to the sacrifice. We must not forget 
that a new Britain, a new Empire, a new Imperial 
outlook is being shaped over the far-flung area of 
war. It will not be only to the British Empire 



THOUGHTS ON COMPULSION 131 

that change will come, but to all belligerent na- 
tions. The upheaval, sure as the succession of day 
and night, is one we dare hardly comtemplate, not 
by reason of fear, but by reason of hope. To take 
advantage of the change as it will affect our na- 
tion, all classes of the community must prepare, 
and nothing could have clogged the wheels of 
progress in the near future than the presence in 
our midst of so many thousands of men whose in- 
activity would have been bitterly resented by those 
who have borne the heat and burden of the day. 
Unity of action is a condition precedent to the 
close and merciless revision of existing conditions, 
the ending of privilege, the widening of the powers 
of democracy, the whole peaceful solution of a 
question that two years ago promised to develop 
into a war worse than this we are waging, a war 
of brother against brother. 

I repeat that I am opposed to conscription, par- 
ticularly to a conscription that picks and chooses, 
and does not demand capital as freely as it demands 
life; equally am I opposed to the action of the 
young and unattached men who shrink from as- 
suming their proper responsibilities. That they 
would have held back if the conditions of their life, 
whether favourable or unfavourable, had been the 
true conditions of an enlightened citizenship, I 
sincerely doubt, that they should have been forced 



132 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

to undertake as a duty what they should have em- 
braced as a privilege is matter for regret. Hap- 
pily they will not go unrewarded, they will see their 
errors, and they will come back to a country they 
have helped to save with the keenest determina- 
tion to make it worth living in as well as worth 
fighting for. 



XIV 

WOMEN AND WAR 

"Why is it," wrote an editor, criticising a view of 
women that I had put forward, "why is it that 
woman is actually a war lover at heart, an inciter 
to and encourager of war? Can you explain why, 
while some women condemn fighting, the great ma- 
jority do not shrink from it, and even regard the 
fighting man as the proper object of their admira- 
tion?" It was a challenge, that I will answer to 
the best of my ability. 

In the first place, I must admit that the state- 
ment is true about countless women. Only yes- 
terday I had a letter from a friend to whom I had 
written my sympathy; her only son was killed in 
the British advance. "I need no more consolation," 
she wrote. "Harry's colonel has sent me a letter 
telling me of my poor boy's bravery. I am proud 
to think that he has lived up to our tradition — ours 
has always been a fighting family, you know." 

I would not criticise a bereaved mother; I can 
never forget that my eldest son has been in the 
fighting line, that my other boy gave up Cambridge 

133 



134 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

for the aviation school, and is now flying in France, 
that my son-in-law is a soldier, and that of many 
friends and a few relatives only the memory re- 
mains. But I feel, from the bottom of my heart, 
that the death and glory idea is wrong; that the 
attraction of medals, ribbons, stars, orders, titles 
and uniforms and brass buttons is false, and that 
an ever-increasing number of women are conscious 
of the truth, not only here but in France, Germany, 
Austria, Russia and Italy. 

That consciousness cannot become fully articu- 
late until the war is over. For each belligerent 
nation the duty at this moment is clear — it must 
fight for what it holds to be right, must struggle 
for victory until the end. When that end comes 
I believe that the reign of the old ideas will end 
with it, and that all women will recognise the truth 
that is already clear as daylight to the minority. 

Why is woman actually a war lover at heart? 
The question stings me. I am almost reluctant 
to answer. Yet though the fault is woman's, the 
responsibility is man's. Down to only a few years 
ago woman was no more than man's toy. She ex- 
isted for his pleasure and convenience. If he cov- 
ered her with pretty dresses and radiant jewels it 
was because she was his chattel. It seems only 
yesterday that a married woman's property became 
her husband's when he married her; that she could 



WOMEN AND WAR 135 

not bring an action at law. It needed the cele- 
brated Jackson case, familiar to students of the 
feminist movement, to decide that a man might 
not lock his wife up in his house. 

I believe that the law enabling a man to ad- 
minister "moderate chastisement" to his wife has 
never been repealed. A woman cannot divorce her 
drunken, dissolute husband unless he ill-uses her 
physically; the law, unable to deny that woman 
has a body, will not grant her the possession of 
a soul. Trashy novels, trivial amusement, unend- 
ing decoration, freedom from the development of 
mentality and personality — these are the things that 
have been held to suffice women, and though there 
have always been a few great women in the world, 
the vast majority has been compelled to accept the 
conditions offered. 

I cannot help thinking that if there had not 
been a surplus of women over men in countries 
where monogamy rules, change would have been 
longer still in coming; but there have always been 
tens of thousands of women for whom there is 
neither mate, domestic inactivity nor child-bearing, 
and the educational progress, though leaden footed, 
has moved. 

From the Garden of Eden to Ibsen's "Dolls' 
House" is a far cry, but it was left to the great 
Scandinavian dramatist to open woman's eyes. 



136 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

That is, I think, why he was greeted by male critics 
with such howls of execration — they saw the foun- 
dation of the old order being sapped. Man had 
appealed to woman's vanity, and had consequently 
developed it enormously; but the motive was little 
higher than that which inspires the male baboon 
when he goes courting. Ibsen showed woman the 
result of her submission. 

Only the historian, looking at our social history 
when the youngest of us "has lain for a century 
dead," will realise the strength and progress of the 
feminist movement in the last decade or two; the 
barriers it has surmounted or swept away; the 
barbed wire entanglements of prejudice and con- 
vention against which it has flung itself. Yet I 
am bold enough to declare that had universal war 
been mooted in 1934 instead of 1914 woman 
throughout all the countries of potential combatants 
would have combined instantly to prevent it. 

At present the ranks of the thinkers are too 
thin ; woman, is divided against herself. The worst 
foes of feminism are women ; it is the anti-feminists 
who parade the streets in khaki, who band them- 
selves into wholly unnecessary and sometimes dis- 
reputable anti-German leagues, who labour as 
though war were a glory rather than a curse. You 
will not find militarists or anti-feminists among 
the glorious sisterhood of the hospitals, for they 



WOMEN AND WAR 137 

almost alone among women know what war really 
is. If the propaganda of feminism could have 
spread, if it could have invaded Germany, where 
the Church, the nursery and the kitchen are ex- 
pected to fill every woman's life, what a very dif- 
ferent answer would have been given to the am- 
bitions of rulers and the blundering of politicians! 
In how many million homes, where sadness reigns 
supreme, would there have been the simple, harm- 
less happiness that is the birthright of us all? 

Is it the irony of fate that man must pay the 
terrible price for having made woman what she is ; 
for having stifled or sought to stifle her common 
sense; for robbing her of the rights that she pos- 
sesses by reason of being a human being; for dis- 
tracting her with gawds and frivolities, and seeking 
to keep her merely as a minister to his pleasures and 
a mother to his children? He has paid for the 
supreme folly of generations with the price of the 
lives of millions of his best and bravest, with the 
ruin of flourishing cities and fair country, with 
the poverty of the generation to come, and with 
many another bitter offering of which he is not 
yet fully aware. 

Doubtless there are still in our midst countless 
women who accept all that is happening as inevi- 
table; who look upon it without realising that had 
the sex responded to the ideals of feminism and 



138 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

become one sisterhood without boundaries and 
without a limited patriotism conditioned by the ac- 
cident of birth, these things could not have been. 
I say, without hesitation, that the future of the 
world demands the elimination of some existing 
types of women, the education of others, and, in 
the end, the union of all. 

Man was not born merely for glorious death, 
he was born for glorious life, and in the systematic 
and universally condoned slaughter of man by man 
there is neither honour nor glory. The world, prop- 
erly administered, can produce enough food and 
clothing for all ; it has work and a measure of hap- 
piness for all. Our enemies are not Englishmen 
or Germans, Frenchmen or Turks; they are 'jno- 
rance and poverty, diseare and 'vice. Woman recog- 
nises the truth — that is to say, thinking and eman- 
cipated woman recognises it — and she knows that 
all the strife that tears the older world asunder 
is fratricidal, that a million times Cain strikes down 
a million times Abel, and in so doing deliberately 
obscures the Divine Event toward which all creation 
moves. 

Woman falters, she is young in mental growth 
and still very weak, though growing stronger hour 
by hour. She sees nothing of war, but she hears 
of moving incidents by flood and field and hair- 
breadth 'scapes in the imminent deadly breach, and 



WOMEN AND WAR 139 

her sense of romance so largely fostered by per- 
nicious or trivial literature is stirred to its depths. 
She wants for her son or her husband or her lover 
some of the dust of praise, some of the ribbons 
and medals, some of the glory in which she will 
discern some pale reflection of herself. 

She falls in love with war because she has not 
the least inkling of its realities; her mourning gar- 
ments are edged with pride. It has been left to this 
terrible struggle to tear some of the bandages from 
her eyes and to rob her of an unworthy ideal. 
What a supreme misfortune that world tragedy 
has supervened while she is growing up, before she 
has learned to grasp the power that lies to hand! 
In instances beyond numbering she has passed the 
feminist movement by, quite content to hug her 
chains as long as they are heavily gilded. She does 
not realise and does not believe in her own powers, 
and in Central Europe, at least, she has been kept 
under surveillance all the time. 

England, France, and America are the great 
Powers that have given feminism a chance. Rus- 
sia was beginning to follow suit, but the oak that 
will in years to come defy so many storms and shel- 
ter so many lives is as yet a sapling. We must face 
the bitter truth that had all our sisters accepted 
feminism we would have saved man from his worst 
enemy, we could have saved him from himself. 



140 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

We could have said — 

"We brought you into the 'world, we fed you at 
the breast, we guarded your tender years. When 
you grew older we gave you inspiration and the love 
that is the romance of life. We bore you children 
through agonies of which you know nothing; we 
loved you with the love that is woman's whole ex- 
istence. You shall not destroy yourself, for you 
are ours and we are yours, and we are placed on 
this earth to lift it nearer to heaven, not to drag it 
down into hell. Your bits of shining metal or rib- 
bons, your uniforms, your personal bravery are as 
nothing to us, if to earn the one or prove the other 
you are to kill and maim our husbands and sons, 
our fathers and brothers. There are greater fights 
to be fought, nobler victories to be won, and in the 
only war worth waging we can move by your side. 
Love and not hate must rule the world." 

The time will come when woman will speak to 
man in this wise, and he will listen because he must, 
even though in listening he remove the strange, 
obscene gods of strife from his Pantheon. That 
the truth is known already to noble-minded women 
throughout the world is to me the most vitalising 
comfort that these days can yield. That so many 
women still pass it by, that they praise war and 
magnify personal courage and "martial glory," 
that they still foster and encourage the meanest 



WOMEN AND WAR 141 

hatreds born of war, is I think worse than many a 
disaster. But the lesson it enforces is plain. The 
time is not ripe; before she can handle the power 
to which she lays claim woman must abjure her 
idols, she must follow the path of pain and suf- 
fering a little longer, she must learn for herself 
through bitter experience how great a curse war is. 
I believe she is learning her lesson; I believe that 
the hosts of the unthinking are melting, and that as 
the real meaning of glory, heroism and the rest is 
brought home to her she will understand. 

Even men in the lands of death and desolation 
have been vouchsafed a glimpse of the truth. There 
is nothing quite so pathetic in modern history as 
that mingling of foes on Christmas Day, 1914, in 
a brief truce of God. Truly the light was brief and 
soon withdrawn, not to be rekindled a year later, 
but it was strong enough to testify to the brother- 
hood of man obscured so long by kings and states- 
men. 

Women can rekindle the light so that it will not 
be suddenly put out; they have no nobler purpose 
under heaven. And in the days when they are 
come to their full stature the memory of those 
who applauded strife and were dazzled by some of 
its exterior aspects will be utterly and happily for- 
gotten. 



XV 

RACE SUICIDE 

I was visiting the north of England in connection 
with an Industrial Congress, and I called upon a 
woman whose husband worked in a mine. Her 
small house was scrupulously clean, she was young, 
vigorous, swift in thought and movement, and 
gave me the impression that nothing came into her 
life in the form of obstacle and surprise without 
finding her ready to deal with it effectively. She 
showed me with a certain pride the small collection 
of books on social subjects bought in second-hand 
shops by her and her husband. I remember see- 
ing John Stuart Mill, Ruskin, William Morris, 
Rowntree, Henry George, and many another fa- 
miliar name. "We have read them together," she 
told me, "we have educated one another since the 
time we first met at evening classes." I remarked 
that her married life seemed to lack one thing only, 
and that was a family, and I quoted the Eastern 
aphorism that a house without children is a garden 
without flowers. She smiled a little sadly, and 
then I noted how some faint lines about her mouth 

142 



RACE SUICIDE 143 

tightened and hardened, robbing her of a certain 
charm. "Lady Warwick," she said, "we earn be- 
tween us by hard work from day to day between 
four and five pounds a week. It has taken many 
years to reach that figure, and there is no chance 
of passing beyond it. What we have endured on 
the road to this comparative comfort we alone 
know, and we don't talk about it. But we both 
believe that the game is not worth the candle. The 
conditions of life in England are not worth per- 
petuating, and neither of us would willingly bring 
children into the world to take their chance and 
run their horrible risks as we did." She stopped 
for a moment in order to be sure of her self-con- 
trol, and then she told me that in her view, though 
all her heart cried out for little children, sterility 
was the only protest that could be made against 
the cruel conditions of modern life under capi- 
talism. "I know that my husband and I are de- 
sirables from the employer's standpoint. We earn 
far more than we receive, we are temperate, hard- 
working, punctual, reliable. But when we have 
settled our rent and rates, clubs, and insurances, 
dressed ourselves, paid tram fares and bought a 
few books, there is nothing left but a slender mar- 
gin that a few months' illness would sweep away. 
For a week or ten days a year we may learn that 
England is not all as hideous as this corner of it, 



144 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

but we shall die without a glimpse of the world be- 
yond and of its treasures that our books tell us 
about. If we stop to think, our life is full of un- 
satisfied longings, and though we don't give them 
free play we can't ignore them altogether. So 
we will not produce any more slaves for the capi- 
talist, and I can tell you that there is not one de- 
cently educated, young married woman of my ac- 
quaintance who is not of the same mind. You 
could go into a score of houses known to me in 
this town alone and find strong, vigorous women 
whose childlessness is their one possible protest 
against the existing wage slavery." 

Years have passed since, in that gloomy little 
northern town with its congeries of mean streets 
looking meaner than ever under the rain, I met 
the speaker whose name has passed from me. She 
may well be approaching the time when Nature 
will confirm her resolve irrevocably, but the mem- 
ory of that conversation has haunted me with the 
vision of thousands of lost souls and unhappy 
lives. 

I know now, if I did not know it then, that the 
music of little voices and the patter of little feet 
would have brought into that poor worker's life 
many of the joys for which she sighed in vain. She 
did not know, nor at that time did I, that obedi- 
ence to natural law ensures a happiness that is in- 



RACE SUICIDE 145 

dependent of external circumstances, while disobe- 
dience brings in its train an ever-growing mental 
discord and sows the seeds of disease and decay. 
Statistics can be fascinating friends even though 
they be formidable acquaintances; they have a 
rough eloquence of their own that is more effective 
than honeyed speech. 

The birth-rate of England, France, and the 
United States, associated as it is in all these coun- 
tries with the death-rate of the newly born, is to 
me one of the most depressing signs of the times. 
I cannot help realising that in many cases sterility 
is not the deliberate protest of the wage slave, it 
is the selfish protest of the pleasure seeker, and 
in a small minority of cases the genuine, yet nar- 
row, fear of the eugenist and his following whose 
enthusiasms have outrun both knowledge and faith. 
Tolstoy went so far as to say that the man who en- 
joys association with his wife for any purpose save 
procreation is guilty of a crime. While many child- 
less women live celibate lives, particularly in Amer- 
ica, the great majority do not. In Milton's stately 
words they "of love and love's delight take freely," 
as though the power that rules and guides the world 
could in the long run be outwitted by what it has 
created. 

To-day the civilised world is at the parting of 
the ways. War has riven asunder the ranks of the 



146 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

best and bravest, and has left in the hearts of the 
survivors so vivid a sense of the horrors of life 
that many a man will hesitate to become a father 
lest his sons have to take their place in time to 
come on the fields of war and his daughters chance 
to be among the dwellers in a conquered city. All 
classes have been gathered to battle, one and all 
will feel the responsibility attending the failure of 
our civilisation. While many will believe they are 
responding to a high instinct when they elect to fol- 
low the line of least resistance and leave the world 
a little poorer, the cumulative effect of such a de- 
cision is positively terrible to contemplate. 

There are some lines in Coriolanus that might 
have been addressed not to those who banished him 
from Rome, but to the women of the world's most 
highly civilised countries: — 

"Have the power still 
To banish your defenders; till at length 
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels, 
Making not reservation of yourselves, 
Still your own foes, deliver you as most 
Abated captives to some nation 
That won you without blows." 

If these lines are really as appropriate as they 
seem to me, it is because the women of the civi- 
lised world and the more leisured section of it are 
on their trial. There is going to be an unimagined 






RACE SUICIDE 147 

shortage among the best elements of the most highly- 
civilised population, a shortage due in part to the 
fashion in which responsible women have neglected 
their duties hitherto. If the pleasure lovers de- 
cline their share of child-bearing on the ground that 
it robs them of long periods of amusement, and if 
the finest type of women workers refuse on the 
other grounds raised earlier in this paper, what will 
be the result ? There will be a sharp social cleavage, 
the few clever exploiters will enchain the unfit who 
are produced so rapidly, we shall develop a small 
class that governs and a large class that is ruled, all 
progress will come to an end, while the conditions 
obtaining when the industrial era was opened by 
steam power will be revived with all the attendant 
horrors in some new and unsuspected guise. 

It is well to remember how, following the first 
trumpet call of war, our hard-won liberties were 
stripped from us. Some of my American friends 
say it is because our free institutions were not very 
deeply rooted, but I am well convinced that if the 
United States were involved, the results would be 
much the same. War always dethrones Liberty, 
and the nation that can set her up again when peace 
is restored may be congratulated. As a rule the 
struggle has to begin all over again, for the State 
advances claims that are incompatible with any kind 
of freedom that is worth having. Only the will of 



148 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the people can gain liberty, and to make that will 
sufficiently strong and effective it must be ex- 
pressed by the best human material, the children of 
the best types. So it seems to me that race suicide, 
evil at all times, becomes in seasons like this an 
act of treason, not only to the nation but to civili- 
sation and all those ideals upon which civilisation 
waits. 

In the town to which I referred on the first page 
of this paper, the women who deliberately discarded 
motherhood might between them have raised a 
strong company to fight for the rights of the next 
generation. They were shocked to consider the 
travail that brought them beyond the reach of want, 
had they lost sympathy with those who succumbed 
by the way? Is not the fate of these last the more 
tragic? 

The faults and failures of life are not a divine 
dispensation. Providence has placed us in a mar- 
vellous world, capable of raising far more than is 
needed to supply the reasonable wants of one and 
all. That there are misery, injustice, want and 
inequality must not be charged to the account of 
Providence, but to the foolishness and immortal 
greed of man, who cannot deal equitably with the 
resources of which he is the trustee. The world 
waxes richer year by year, for we are gathering 
the power to increase production and to distribute 



RACE SUICIDE 149 

the surplus of one region to supply the deficiency 
of another. It is a very fair and beautiful world, 
and we need no more than that all should be per- 
mitted to share what is produced. To enforce this 
distribution, to see that it is enjoyed in peace and 
tranquillity is the appointed task of a strong and 
vigorous democracy. The primal duty of women is 
to give this democracy to the world and keep its 
strength renewed. 

Some may fear that women "condemned to fer- 
tility" as one phrased it in my hearing recently, may 
be unable to take their part in the struggle for 
emancipation. But surely motherhood enforces the 
qualifications of women, justifies their claims and 
provides them with the material to train for future 
triumphs. Olive Schreiner, in her magnificent book 
"Woman and Labour," in which, however, she 
wrote of the birth-rate and its incidents without 
visualising the possibilities of world war, says that 
some birds have raised the union of the sexes to a 
far higher level than humanity has reached. The 
male and the female share the nest building, the 
incubation and the feeding of the young, and it 
was impossible for that fine observer to note any 
difference in the task of the sexes. So it should 
be with us and will be when we have developed to 
that standard. The labours and responsibilities of 
the home, and the daily work will be a part of the 



150 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

common contract and bond of men and women, and 
no woman will be disqualified by the fulfilment of 
her duties in the home more than the man is dis- 
qualified by reason of his labours beyond it. We 
are all conscious of evils that throng the world, 
we all strive to better them in a degree, few of 
the most careless fail altogether to be kind in some 
fashion, however haphazard, but if the women who 
take life seriously will not only fulfil the command- 
ment to be fruitful and multiply, but will do their 
best to urge their reluctant sisters, a single genera- 
tion may avail to restore the balance of sanity, 
equity and progress throughout civilisation. 

This social disease of race suicide has not been 
long established. It came into France, I believe, 
as a result of the law that divides the inheritance 
of the parents among the children equally, it has 
crept into England and America chiefly as a 
product of overmuch luxury and wealth. Apart 
from such a reason as calculated protest against 
social inequalities, it is due to the methods of life 
that soften women and make child-bearing a ter- 
ror. I have been told by my travelled friends, the 
men and women who have been to the far ends of 
the earth, that in the lands where women are hardy, 
healthy, and vigorous, there is no trouble for the 
mother at these critical times. She recovers her full 
strength in a few days. At Easton, in Essex, where 



RACE SUICIDE 151 

I was born and brought up, and at Warwick, where 
I have lived so much since my marriage, I have seen 
that the workers' wives who live frugally and ac- 
tively are able to rear large families and retain not 
only their health, but their good looks. Casting my 
memory back I can recall the time when great fam- 
ilies were the rule, and not the exception, among 
the leisured classes. The women who entertained in 
great houses that they administered in every de- 
tail, brought their six, eight, or ten children into 
the world and lived long, healthy, happy lives. The 
modern fashion is of recent date, and now that the 
war has stirred the heights and depths of human 
consciousness the old bad custom should pass, for 
the sake of a world that the madmen of mankind 
have made desolate. At no period in the history of 
Western civilisation, has it been more necessary 
for the women who count as factors in world prog- 
ress to consider their duty and fulfil it to the ex- 
treme limit of their power. 

I think that the need of the United States is 
not less than our own, for it sees the influx day 
by day of the most diverse elements, and knows 
well enough that the genius of rule belongs to the 
Anglo-Saxon. The negroid element does not for- 
get its duty, and the honest class of immigrant that 
seeks to share the benefit of an enlightened civilisa- 
tion is hardly less prolific. Against all the prob- 



152 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

lems that my American friends, and they are many, 
have set out, there is no surer safeguard than an 
ever increasing birth-rate of the best elements. 

I have never felt disposed to join in the cry of 
the Yellow Peril, nor to think well of those who 
raise it wantonly, but certain facts stand out in a 
very bright light shed upon them by the war. In 
the first place the Allied powers of the Entente 
have sought the services of both yellow and black 
races, and have by so doing proclaimed the dawn 
of a new era in which all questions of equality 
must come to the front. Japan is very wide awake, 
and China is still a slumbering giant. Given sani- 
tary science and a great gift of organisation, she 
might rule all Asia. The Berbers, Arabs, and ne- 
groid races of Africa have lined our trenches and 
taken part in our attacks ; one and all, to say noth- 
ing of the Indian soldiers, have learned more of 
war in the past year or so than they had ever known 
before. They have seen the weakness as well as 
the strength of the white man. 

Black and yellow races alike are extraordinarily 
prolific; there is among their women no shirking 
of duty in that regard. Very soon the white man 
will realise that he cannot maintain his old position 
unless he is fully prepared to accept responsibili- 
ties far greater than those of his forebears. If 
the rate of his progression falls while that of the 



RACE SUICIDE 153 

other races rises, there can only be one solution in 
the end, such a solution as "Coriolanus" speaks of 
in the scathing lines I have quoted. In short, if 
the white man's burden is to be borne there must 
be sufficient white men to bear it. Statesmen will 
labour in vain and the friends of progress will strive 
to no end if the start that the other races have 
gained is to be increased, and the white women 
of the world must decide whether or no they are 
content that not only their own nation but the 
whole standard of life for which they stand is to 
be submerged, or whether by a generous interpre- 
tation of the duties of motherhood they will enable 
their people to remain in the future as they have 
been in the past. We cannot tell what the final har- 
vest of war will amount to, but with the dead, the 
diseased and the disabled, it will probably run into 
ten figures, more than five times the measure of 
human sacrifice demanded by all the great wars that 
shook the world from Blenheim to Omdurman. 
Even these monstrous figures do not tell the whole 
tale, for there will be among the dead, thousands 
of men whose talent might have developed into 
genius, and there will be hundreds of thousands 
of widows left in the full flush of womanhood, with 
all their possibilities unfulfilled, and, in countless 
cases, beyond the reach of fulfilment. To put it 
brutally, our civilisation that stands in bitter need 



154 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

of its best breeding stock has deliberately slaugh- 
tered a very large percentage of it. 

This, indeed, is race suicide in its worst form, 
and just as woman hopes by her emancipation to 
dam the tide of war, so she must step into the breach 
and dam the tide of loss. Emancipation will do 
very little for women if when they have obtained 
it they find the best elements of the white races in- 
creasingly unable to stand the strain imposed by 
war. They will not forget that the black man's 
women are bought to tend his land and enable 
him to live in ease or that the Mohammedan in 
the enforced seclusion of the harem may share 
his favours among four lawful wives and as many 
concubines as his purse can furnish. As the stand- 
ard of civilisation declines, woman, by reason of 
her physical weakness, must pay an ever increasing 
penalty; only when it has risen to heights un- 
reached before the war may she hope to come into 
her own and to realise ambitions that, dormant or 
active, have been with her through the centuries. 
The whole question of her future has been brought 
by the war outside the domain of personal or even 
national interests, suddenly it has become racial. 

Down to a little while ago the solution was not 
in woman's hands, to-day it belongs to her, she has 
to decide not only for herself, but for all white 
mankind. It is not too much to say that civilisa- 



RACE SUICIDE 155 

tion, as we know it, will soon be waiting upon her 
verdict. If this statement seems too far reaching, 
if it seems to challenge probability, let those who 
think so turn to any good history of the world and 
see for themselves how each civilisation has been 
overwhelmed as soon as it reached the limits of 
its efficiency and endurance. In the history of this 
planet, changes no less sweeping than that which I 
have indicated have been recorded, the Providence 
that has one race or colour in its special keeping is 
but the offspring of our own conceit. The real 
Providence that dominates the universe treats all 
the races on their merits. If, and only if, the best 
types of women will embrace motherhood ardently, 
bravely content to endure the discomforts and dis- 
cover for themselves the infinite pleasure, can the 
earth, as we know it, survive the terrible shock it 
has received. Even then the recovery will be slow, 
and the price to be paid will be bitter beyond im- 
agining, but we shall in the end win through, 
though I who write and you who read may well 
have settled our account with mortality before the 
season of full recovery dawns upon a wasted world. 
Should we fail in our duty then we must pass as 
Babylon and Egypt and Rome passed before us, to 
become no more than mere shadows of a name. 

The least among us may dream dreams and see 
visions. My own dream and my own vision are 



156 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

of woman as the saviour of the race. I see her 
fruitful womb replenish the wasted ranks, I hear 
her wise counsels making irresistibly attractive the 
flower-strewn ways of peace. I see the few women 
who encourage war turning from the error of their 
ways, and those who have spurned motherhood real- 
ising before it is too late the glory of their neglected 
burden. And I believe with a faith that nothing 
can shake that with these two changes and a wise 
recognition that the fruits of the earth were given 
to us all not in accordance with our gifts, but in 
the measure of our needs, a new season may come 
to this distracted world. Should all the high hopes 
of our noblest suffer eclipse, should all the travail 
of the Christian era be brought to nothingness? I 
have too much faith in my sex to believe it will let 
the world perish if the real meaning and signifi- 
cance of its duty can be brought home to it. We 
have been ill educated, we have been spoilt, we have 
been corrupted, but for all that there is a certain 
soundness at the heart of woman. She has not 
shrunk from the duties she understands, even the 
lapse from grace that recent years have revealed 
will not outlive this understanding. 

The responsibility for spreading the truth rests 
upon all who recognise it. There are countless 
women throughout the world who by sheer force 
of character can influence their women friends and 



RACE SUICIDE 157 

have learned that the vital problem of sex is not 
rightly to be treated as though it were not fit for 
discussion. They are scattered over all the cities 
of the world ; the cumulative effect of their labours 
would be immense, irresistible. I am sure that the 
perils I have outlined are known and feared in the 
Old World and the New, that they are mentioned 
in the highest quarters of London, Paris, and Wash- 
ington, and that the transitional period separating 
words from deeds must needs be brief because the 
problem does not brook delay. Many women will 
respond without questioning to the call of duty. 
Some, whose life struggle can be understood only 
by those who share it, may ask first that their off- 
spring shall be treated as what they are, State as- 
sets, and not abandoned to all the evils of poverty. 
Others will want to know that they are not raising 
sons to become the "cannon fodder" of kings and 
statesmen. In the light of the needs of the white 
man's world, and the weight of the white man's 
burden, are even these assurances too much to ask? 



XVI 

THE LESSONS OF THE PICTURE THEATRE 

It came upon me with a sudden sense of revelation, 
for when I went into the theatre my thoughts 
were heavy with the weight of war. The friend 
with whom I had dined had insisted, and though 
at first I had refused, she had compromised with 
my objections. "Come and see some pictures, if 
you cannot face a three-act play," she had said. 
"I can promise you something quite remarkable, 
and when you have had enough, just rise and I 
will follow." But in the end it was my friend who 
suggested leaving, because she had a long day's 
work before her and knew that I too had an en- 
gagement nearly two hundred miles from town. 
And when I told her that she had shown me more 
than she herself had seen, and that I would not 
have missed that couple of hours' illumination on 
any account, she merely said she would not attempt 
to understand, but was very glad. 

I have been greatly concerned with problems of 
peace and war from the woman's view-point. So 
many women have written to me about the question, 

158 



LESSONS OF THE PICTURE THEATRE 159 

some from far-away corners of the States, others 
from remote English country-sides. I feel the fer- 
ment in the blood of every thinking woman ; I know 
how surely and inevitably the time is coming when 
men and women must face the problem of world 
control side by side. It has seemed to me that only 
one force can avail to end war, and that is the 
force of education supplementing the efforts and 
strengthening the bands of brotherhood. But how 
should one make the dry bones of education live 
for those to whom education is now no more than 
dry bones? We can reach the children whose im- 
agination is yet immature, how reach the grown 
up, immersed in the struggle for life and bringing 
even to their leisure the harassed mind and tired 
brain? How make the path clear, how stir to the 
depths their slumbering sense of the world that lies 
beyond their working day? When I went into 
the Scala Theatre in London the problem was a 
baffling one, when I had seen "The Birth of a Na- 
tion" I realised the truth that such pictures in the 
hands of men with insight and vision may yet move 
the world. 

We of England may well forget the follies of 
our forebears, and the American with Anglo-Saxon 
blood in his veins may well forgive them, while both 
tingle with pride at the accomplishment of those 
"Mayflower" Pilgrims who paved the way for the 



160 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

coming of a nation destined I think in the near 
future to become the wealthiest, most powerful, and, 
one hopes, the most progressive on the face of the 
earth. But who realised, save in a vague and uncer- 
tain fashion, the true glory of America's brief his- 
tory? Who could visualise the scenes to which 
statesmen and orators recur from time to time? Of 
the general public few indeed if any, to the rank 
and file the experience of seeing the past flower into 
life before them must have been such a one as Keats 
describes — 

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken, 
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men 
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

A few deep thinkers, men with vivid minds, must 
of course have seen beyond the limited vision of 
the multitude, or nothing so sweepingly compre- 
hensive, so splendidly realistic, so artistically com- 
plete as "The Birth of a Nation" could have been 
devised. It is poetry almost in the sense that 
Hardy's "Dynasts" is poetry, while its educational 
value, appealing as it can to young and old, learned 
and illiterate alike, is very real. Whatever the com- 
mercial value, and this I am glad to think must be 
great, the value of the spectacle as a force for the 



LESSONS OF THE PICTURE THEATRE 161 

promotion of the highest order of patriotism is 
greater still. I can only feel delighted to think that 
such a task could be so carefully undertaken and 
so satisfactorily achieved. 

A picture play may not seem at first sight a very 
great medium for presenting the truth about his- 
tory or even a single facet of the great diamond of 
life ; at least if I am honest with myself this would 
have been my own opinion down to the date of my 
visit to "The Birth of a Nation." I had misjudged 
the scope of the picture play in the light of the 
hoardings, vulgar, fantastic, or silly, that make the 
streets of even the small provincial towns more than 
necessarily offensive. I did not understand that in 
the hands of capable and imaginative artists, not 
only the present can be put before us, but the past 
can be reconstructed, and the future suggested. 
How it would help us to understand not only our- 
selves, but others of the great group of nations if 
we could see the history of all countries presented 
with something of the skill and sincerity that have 
gone to these graphic outlines of America's past! 
Often in Warwick Castle, as I have pondered some 
of the records of bygone time and half-forgotten 
history, I have marvelled at the pageant that is sug- 
gested, but never realised by the pages before me. 
If we could bring our history before ourselves would 
it not teach us more of our triumphs and mistakes 



162 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

than any book? And if the history of the struggles 
and endeavours of other nations could be faithfully 
presented, would there not be in the vision some- 
thing to make us more sympathetic, more ready to 
realise that we are all passing along the same road, 
a narrow bridge of consciousness spanning the river 
of life that flows through eternity, with dreamless 
sleep or life beyond our ken on either hand ? Would 
it not help to teach us that for the people of every 
race that brief spell of consciousness is associated 
with so many self-made troubles that the hell of 
the obsolete theologians is rendered quite superflu- 
ous? We cannot in normal times hate the men, 
women, and children of another race merely because 
they are not of our own. The same virtues, the 
same strivings, the same uprising towards the elu- 
sive light are shared in common. So, too, are the 
prejudices and errors with which we strive. Pre- 
sented with sympathy, and, above all, with humility, 
the history of the birth and subsequent struggle of 
all the nations would be a potent force for peace, 
because it would be the first aid to understanding. 
I think that the men and women who have paid 
their vows to peace, those who, while realising that 
the present war must go on to the end, will make 
any sacrifice to deprive it of a successor, may find in 
the picture play, carefully conditioned to the needs 
of our fateful times, the fulcrum that will enable 



LESSONS OF THE PICTURE THEATRE 163 

them to move the world. I can see it passing from 
the domain of the theatre to the lecture hall. I can 
see the best features of the enterprise enlarged and 
developed until at last the benefits of travel and a 
knowledge of history are put before those who 
under normal conditions — or rather the conditions 
that the Moloch of commercialism has made normal 
— would never be able to enjoy either. I hold and 
shall always hold, that the ultimate power of di- 
recting their lives is in the hands of the people, it 
is not rightly in the gift of Kings or Kaisers, diplo- 
mats, statesmen, or soldiers. The sunrise of peace 
waits upon the dawn of knowledge, of knowledge 
that can be acquired by men, women and grown- 
up children of the working classes, the classes that 
accomplish all that is worth accomplishing, and pay 
the fullest penalty of the greed and vanity of those 
who live upon their labours. But, as I have so 
often insisted, the workers are inarticulate, particu- 
larly in the southern counties and round the me- 
tropolis of England ; they do not breathe the fresh 
air of the north, and it is notorious that London 
iruins the breed of the workers. The greater the 
city, the greater the unemployment, the keener the 
competition, the readier the acceptance of conditions 
that make men the slaves instead of the masters of 
their task, the smaller the leisure to think or to 
study the curious and manifold complexities of ex- 



164 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

isting conditions. Only by making that study easy 
and by giving it the form of relaxation, by stimu- 
lating the tired brain, can the worker be roused. 
It is a matter of fact rather than of conjecture, that 
the picture "palace" is beginning to claim his scanty 
leisure, and his tiny surplus over the paramount de- 
mands of a minimum of food and clothing. Demo- 
cratic in its essence and secure in its appeal, it seems 
to me that the picture theatre can be developed to 
the most instructive and useful ends. It can teach 
the working man the history of his own career and 
long struggle towards fairer conditions of life and 
labour, it can show the world's workers all aiming 
to reach the same legitimate goal and it can enforce 
the lesson that a unity of ideals, and a stern re- 
jection of the counsels of those who would make 
mankind his enemies rather than his friends will 
make war impossible. It may be that in America, 
that great melting-pot, as Mr. Zangwill calls it, 
of all jarring nationalities, the lesson is more ob- 
vious and more quickly mastered, but there is a 
work well-nigh as great to be done in England, 
where if the mixing of the nationalities is less no- 
ticeable, the need for knowledge is still greater. 
The States, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, 
entirely self-supporting, and utterly unchallenged 
by any Power within striking distance, may well 



LESSONS OF THE PICTURE THEATRE 165 

laugh in the face of those who would impose upon 
them the extravagant horrors of militarism. 

We shall have to face militarism over here; it 
has had its advocates for many years, and — why 
deny it ? — their position will be immensely strength- 
ened by the war. We know by now that our rulers 
cannot save us, that if we would be saved it must 
be by ourselves, and we know too that salvation 
will be born of knowledge and of knowledge alone. 
I regard the picture theatre as the finest medium 
for the spread of knowledge now before the public, 
and I am confident that if the great engineers of 
enterprise will devote their energies to the sane 
peace propaganda that consists in showing not only 
the history but the aims of the great majority of 
civilised people, the lesson will travel far and sink 
deep. "The Birth of a Nation" reveals the in- 
finite capacity of the master film makers, their 
resource and resources, the measure of skill they 
can command. It also shows by reason of its suc- 
cess the immense public interest, the desire to learn, 
and to make use of knowledge. It is not often 
that a venture avowedly commercial in its aims 
can perform a world-wide service, and I am opti- 
mistic enough to believe that those in charge of such 
a work as that which is responsible for my own 
conversion and enthusiasm will be quick to see that 
in serving themselves they can serve humanity. 



XVII 

TRUTH WILL OUT 

It seems only a few years since Truth, if not pre- 
cisely popular, enjoyed a certain reputation, a lit- 
tle definite vogue. To tell the truth, the whole 
truth and nothing but the truth was not only a 
nominal obligation in the courts of law, but a tra- 
dition among a certain class, small but not negligi- 
ble, of English men and women. Truth was found 
in all sorts of places, you met it sometimes in Par- 
liament, generally on the back benches, now and 
again it was seen or suspected in the Press ; it fre- 
quented the Pulpit, and was not unknown upon 
the public platform if the gathering was not one of 
the political rallies that it resolutely ignored. To 
be sure when intended for the appreciation or ad- 
miration of sensitive folk, it was always dressed up 
in garments that hid a part of its native ugliness, 
and over the hard, unrelenting features a certain 
veil, enforcing a decent obscurity, was scrupulously 
drawn. The higher Truth climbed in the social 
scale, the more the trappings, the thicker the veil, 
while on the lowest rungs of the social ladder there 

166 



TRUTH WILL OUT 167 

were none to supply dress or wrappings, and Truth 
stood revealed in such an ugly guise that only 
the strong minded dared to look. When they told 
what they had seen, all those who lived on any of 
the rungs above them deplored at the top of their 
voices the indecency of the revelation and devised 
thicker veils and heavier drapery. And yet for all 
men and all women, according to their capacity for 
looking courageously before them, Truth existed. 
Among most of those who live in comfort there was 
a tradition that Truth had borrowed the head of 
Medusa the Gorgon lady who incontinently turned 
to stone all those who looked upon her, and was 
ultimately tricked out of life and activity by Per- 
seus; on the other hand, the people of the under- 
world, the world that does the rough work, had 
looked upon Truth and found the cold implacable 
eyes had in them more of stimulus than death. 
They even went so far as to hope that in times yet 
to come the robing and veiling of Truth would be 
regarded as an offence and the duty of looking 
Truth straight in the face, would be obligatory 
upon kings, statesmen, clergymen, county and 
district councillors, journalists and lawyers alike. 
Against the gross indelicacy of this democratic sug- 
gestion there was not unnaturally a revolt, as many 
of those people just mentioned had every reason 
to fear that such a decision would rob them of oc- 



168 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

cupations that, if not actually profitable to their 
fellow-men, were at least sometimes dignified and 
very often lucrative. 

Then came War, and the people of all combatant 
countries formed amid and despite their bitter an- 
tagonisms an unwritten, unsigned compact to the 
effect that whatever the divergence of their aims 
and policies, they would at least conduct one part 
of their campaign in common, against a common 
foe. Agreements having lost their validity, it was 
impossible to reduce this one to writing, and they 
knew, too, that actions speak louder than words. 
So with unanimity that forgot all causes of dis- 
pute, the fighting powers found time and means 
and occasion in the midst of their awful traffic to 
wage war against Truth. In this country the naked 
Truth may no longer find a resting place, if the 
well in which Truth is said to dwell could be lo- 
cated it would incontinently be filled up and no 
material would be regarded as too poisonous for 
the purpose. As the well cannot be located, the 
Defence of the Realm Act has, in these islands in- 
stituted sumptuary laws so strict that Truth is now 
robed, veiled, and manacled past recognition. The 
delight of those who have suffered from the con- 
stant fear of the apparition, who have found their 
enjoyment of the feast of life constantly menaced 
by the report that Truth was in the neighbourhood, 



TRUTH WILL OUT 169 

is unbounded. It is admitted by every government 
that Truth is one of the greatest obstacles to the 
proper progress of universal destruction and all 
Governments have substituted in the interests of 
public digestion Fiction, a far more popular crea- 
tion and more palatable too. They call it by the 
title of Official Report. If one Report contradicts 
and is contradicted by all the others, you can at 
least pay your money and take your choice and 
the task of selection is eased by the certain knowl- 
edge that Truth is not admitted to any. 

In the Parliaments of the world responsible 
speakers have but to declare that the irresponsible 
ones are endeavouring to bring back Truth to the 
high assembly, and every one of Fiction's count- 
less adherents will rise in his place to protest. In 
the pulpit, to which Truth still seeks admittance, 
the veil has become a mask, and the garments have 
a double thickness, but in the Courts of whatever 
kind and in Fleet Street it has been found that the 
precautions in vogue before the war are sufficiently 
adequate. 

To any mortal such persecution had been fatal, 
but Truth is immortal and persists. Not even the 
Jews whose sufferings are eternal, or the Belgians, 
Poles, Armenians, Servians, and others whose per- 
secution though intolerable is temporary, strive to 
recover their vanished freedom as resolutely as 



170 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Truth. The harder you use it, the greater its per- 
sistence. Drive it out at the door it returns by 
the window, an indefatigable, untiring immortal, 
seemingly unconscious of the loss of popularity, 
convinced that it has a place in the great scheme 
of things. It whispers to kings on their thrones, 
and to chancellors in their studies, to statesmen on 
Government and opposition benches, to clergymen 
in their pulpits, lawyers in their consulting rooms; 
passing by janitor, secretary, and a sub-editorial 
array, it even invades the editor's desk, persistent 
though ignored. Trampled upon, cast aside, ig- 
nored, eviscerated, turned inside out, confuted, ob- 
scured, denied, perverted, misunderstood and 
damned, it still labours, powerful as in the days 
when old Thomas Carlyle watched its progress 
through the world and hailed it alone immortal. 
With a striking disregard of the laws of emer- 
gency and confusion, it declines to be regarded 
as an enemy alien. With an utter contempt for 
a Fiction entrenched behind all the barbed wires 
of popularity, it whispers the most disconcerting 
statements to those who hoped or believed that it 
was dead. None can say what form the instruc- 
tions, warnings, and admonitions take, but all may 
guess them, and the temptation so to do is ever 
present. 

I think that the one outstanding fact upon which 



TRUTH WILL OUT 171 

Truth insists is that until it is allowed to prevail 
there can be no peace in the world, that even vic- 
tories must be unavailing while the hard-won les- 
sons they bring are taught in terms of fiction. 
Truth tells us that the fog of war is hardly more 
horrible than the fog of falsehood; product of a 
poison gas that is manufactured by every country 
alike. To the Prussians who are in our midst striv- 
ing to fasten upon us the fetters fashioned by our 
enemies for the control of all liberty, comes the se- 
cret warning that such fetters will not fit the Anglo- 
Saxon people, that the rivets will not hold, that 
they will be torn asunder and even used as weapons 
against all forgers. Truth will tell those who seek 
to effect economies at the expense of education that 
only sound training and diligent application to 
every form of activity can enable us to hold our 
own against Germany, whether the defeat of that 
country be whole or partial. Truth says the will 
of the people is being forged as of wrought iron 
upon the fields of war, and that the days of privi- 
lege are numbered. Truth whispers that the bur- 
dens imposed upon those yet unborn, not only in 
Great Britain, but in every belligerent country can 
only be met if they are shared by one and all, not 
with any sense of precedence or class distinction but 
in a brotherhood that embraces all who labour 
whether with hand or brain to the common end. 



172 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Truth will whisper to those who shrink before 
strong, whole-hearted and courageous methods nec- 
essary to bring all classes into line that the needs 
of the time are paramount and that those who will 
not steer the ship of State to a safe harbour be- 
cause of the adverse winds and storming waves 
that lie ahead, must yield to other pilots cast in 
sterner mould. It will point out that the old days 
of political trifling and dalliance are numbered, 
that right and wrong, bravery and cowardice, en- 
ergy and inaction, whatever their future, can no 
longer be weighed in the unjust balances of the 
party system. Truth will say that our empire needs 
the best service, not only of every man, but of every 
woman, and in consequence, that both must be ren- 
dered fit to serve and allowed to express themselves 
to the State's best advantage without reference to 
pedigree or sex. It will declare that an England 
in which the labours of six men out of seven are 
valued at three pounds a week or under, cannot 
endure for the simple reason that under the pres- 
ent social system, hundreds of thousands of really 
capable people who could deserve well of their 
country are doomed by poverty to ineffectiveness. 
Truth will say bluntly that the future demands 
statesmen rather than politicians, men in their 
prime rather than men in their decline. It will 
whisper of the vigorous democracies that the genius 



TRUTH WILL OUT 173 

of empire has brought into being, the democracies 
that have striven so nobly to save the empire and 
must — not for reasons of sentiment alone — play 
their part in administering it. There will not be 
wanting the reminder that the season in which 
crises, military, social, political, can be smothered 
in platitudes is past, not in our time to return. 

If Truth were to proclaim these facts duly 
pointed and applied, together with many another 
of like weight and significance from the house-tops, 
the Defence of the Realm Act would intervene 
promptly, strongly and passionately on behalf of 
Fiction; but the Act has limitations. The Still 
Small Voice evades the Act every time, it speaks 
less from the lips than to the hearts of men. There 
is no humbug so highly placed as to be able to 
shut it out, there is no man or woman so befogged 
or bewildered by the horror of the hour that he can- 
not hear the silences made audible. For Truth is 
not cast out of life, it is but despised and rejected 
by the world's rulers and even they cannot shut 
out the voice that whispers through all their waking 
hours, for while many men can deceive others, few, 
if any, are permitted entirely to deceive themselves 
in times like these. So many soft conventions have 
fallen by the way, so many of life's excuses and 
subterfuges have fallen into everlasting nothing- 
ness. Before the horror-stricken eyes of authority 



174 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the world over, Truth, muzzled, bedraped, masked, 
and shrouded appears again like the skeleton at the 
feast, like the grinning skull that accompanied the 
Roman Emperors on their Triumphs to remind 
them that they too were mortal. Slowly yet with 
deliberation Truth is beginning to shed the cover- 
ings that officialdom had heaped in such designed 
profusion. The day is not far distant when the 
fetters will fall from the limbs, the shroud from 
the dread face, and in that hour not all the Acts 
and Proscriptions will avail to frame a covering. 
Europe, bleeding, sore, wounded, poverty-stricken, 
shattered beyond recognition, will see Truth face to 
face. And then ? 



XVIII 

THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 

I have been trying to look through the clouds of 
war to what lies behind. Quite resolutely I have 
closed my ears to certain empty cries about the com- 
mercial conquest of Germany, about the coming of 
Protection, about all the panaceas of political and 
other quacks. Most of us who take the trouble 
to think can trace these cries to their source. I 
have endeavoured to look to the time when this old 
country of ours will be faced by a new set of con- 
ditions, by forces yet incalculable that war has 
brought into being. People have talked and writ- 
ten glibly about changes of heart, of the frater- 
nising of capital and labour, of sin and crime and 
disease exorcised by some supreme spirit of good 
will, but I have my doubts. "Ccelum non animum 
mutant," wrote Horace, two thousand years ago. 
Men have always made good resolutions in times 
of stress ; they range from the nation's ideals voiced 
by its spokesmen down to the promise of candles 
for the shrine of some saint. The mind can follow 
the road that connects our English House of Com- 

175 



176 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

mons or the Russian home of the Duma with the 
church of Notre Dame de la Garde whereto the 
men who traffic in the mighty waters of the Gulf 
of Lyons pay with knick-knacks for their real or 
imaginary protection. I have no faith in the power 
of good intentions to act automatically. When 
this war is over and we are faced with a victory, 
an indecisive result, or a defeat, the tendency of 
our insularity will be to interfere as little as may 
be with pre-existing conditions. Men who serve 
in high places will be overwrought ; you do not carry 
a part of the burden of the British Empire upon 
your shoulders without a maximum of strain. The 
tendency will, I fear, be to declare that the evil 
of the day is sufficient, that the nation must be kept 
secure from new ideas. There will be few to make 
excursion in search of trouble. Yet there can be 
very few students of social progress who will not 
admit that the only way in which we can make 
good the losses of war, is by turning to the best pos- 
sible account the assets left to us at its conclusion. 
And the supreme asset of a State is its children. 

Let us leave aside for the moment all the other 
burning social questions of the time. They are not 
the less poignant because a great patriotic impulse 
has kept so much suffering silent. The question 
of the future of our great Empire is one that must # 
be decided in a large measure by those who are chil- 



THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 177 

dren to-day. We have to ask ourselves what we 
are doing to prepare them for their labours, and 
how far such preparation can bear comparison with 
that made by the nations which will be our com- 
petitors. We are the trustees of the British Em- 
pire, Unlimited. What manner of estate are we 
going to bequeath to our children? 

Down to the summer of 1914, we had every 
means of doing well for the generation that must 
grasp the reins when at Time's bidding we relin- 
quish them. That we had misused those means 
goes without saying. As far as education goes it 
was said years ago of our richest schools that a 
vast sum of money was expended on education, and 
that a beggarly account of empty brains was the 
result. That indictment holds good to-day. The 
education of the children of the wealthy is both 
costly and ineffective. Much that is taught bears 
no relation to the needs of twentieth-century life. 
Middle class education is better without being good, 
while the State education that, as far as the poor 
is concerned, is both obligatory and free, is worth 
what it costs. Secondary Education is pursued if 
at all under conditions of the greatest difficulty. 
Boys and girls too under our present evil economic 
conditions are turned into wage-earners at the earli- 
est possible moment. County Council classes, often 
capably conducted and well within the reach of 



/ 



178 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the great majority, cannot find adequate support 
for many reasons. One is that the primary educa- 
tion of the poor does not encourage the habit of 
study. The ill-fed children of the slums look upon 
school as a necessary evil, redeemed to a small ex- 
tent by the gift of free meals, over which, we, the 
richest nation of the earth, haggled so long. When 
the children of the poor have reached the standard 
or the age that sets them free, the struggle for 
life begins and finds them too jaded at the end 
of the normal day's work to seek fresh instruc- 
tion, even if they have an inclination or ambition 
to improve their minds. Untrained, undisciplined, 
condemned in many instances to blind-alley em- 
ployment, what better is to be expected? Again 
we are face to face with the demand for cheap la- 
bour, the labour that enriches the employer and 
even gives an illusory benefit to the State. Save 
in the direction of making laws, most of them fool- 
ish, and raising money, much of it ill spent, the 
State follows a policy of laissez faire. The effort to 
make primary education compulsory has seemingly 
left it without the energy to see that it should also 
be sound and effective. The latter-day squabbles 
between Church and State in the schoolroom have 
always been regarded as more interesting than edu- 
cation itself. Legislators by the score have shown 
in Parliament that the question of feeding hungry 






THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 179 

children so that they may be physically fit to learn, 
is the only side of education over which they are 
prepared to spend any thought, and that in order 
to oppose action. So these things were down to 
the time when England went to war, so they will 
be after England returns to peace unless the great 
body of public opinion in the country will realise 
that no victory can be enduring if countries anxious 
to compete with us in the future give a genuine 
education to their children while we remain con- 
tent with a spurious one for ours. The issue can- 
not be evaded ; the responsibility cannot be shirked. 
French education, German, Dutch, Danish, and 
Swiss are better than ours. They take into ac- 
count the needs of the times. They are not founded 
upon old and obsolete prejudices. The technical 
side of educational needs is fairly and fully met. 
The State equipment is better. The teachers know 
that there are people in the world who do not speak 
English, and that several European languages not 
only have a claim to consideration, but must be 
taught by competent masters ; that is to say, by men 
and women with a liberal education born in the 
land whose language they teach. Travelling schol- 
arships should be the first reward of those who ex- 
cel at school. The incentive would be immense, 
and the contribution to the forces of peace im- 
measurable. 



180 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Even our cousins across the Atlantic, who have 
made their educational system a living thing, have 
failed to teach us. Andrew Carnegie, remember- 
ing the land of his birth, has liberally endowed Scot- 
tish University Education with the gold of Pitts- 
burg. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other Amer- 
ican colleges are an example to the world, in Can- 
ada the lesson has been learned, in Toronto, Mon- 
treal and elsewhere, and will soon be fully applied. 
But here in England those who cannot go to Ox- 
ford or Cambridge will find that, for the most part, 
they must be external students in pursuit of the 
higher education, with little of the joyous inter- 
course that kindles ambitions and ideals. We look 
a little askance at education. For the man in the 
street the really great representatives of Cam and 
Isis are those who can row from Putney to Mort- 
lake in the early spring, and those who can shine 
at the cricket ground in Marylebone about mid- 
summer. Scholarship is something in the nature 
of a harmless eccentricity, calling less for rebuke 
than for derision. For this view-point our hope- 
less system of primary education is responsible. 
To be effective in this country education must be 
revised to meet the times we live in, made popular 
and finally democratised. As I write we are waging 
war at the price of some four or five million pounds 
a day. We must wage peace with as fine a dis- 



THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 181 

regard for inevitable expenditure. The cost of 
one week's war will maintain an entirely different 
system of national education for a year. I would 
like to deal in brief broad outline with what might 
be attempted. 

It is only necessary to concede in the first in- 
stance that a sane Government recognises the para- 
mount claims of the children, the terrible loss of 
much of the country's best blood, and the conse- 
quent need of bringing what is left to us to the 
highest pitch of public utility. These premises 
should surely stand beyond controversy. Why 
should not every slum child have its share of pub- 
lic-school life free of all charge? If we have come 
to the conclusion that this is the best thing for 
the future of the country, why should the majority 
of the little ones be left out? Does anybody hold 
that we do not require the best that all the chil- 
dren can do for England? To those who suggest 
that such a simple matter is revolutionary, or that 
it will cost too much, one reply is that our children 
are our greatest national asset. Upon our capacity 
to rear them well and wisely and to educate them 
to the needs of the time, the whole future of the 
British Empire depends. There is really nothing 
revolutionary about the proposal, for, if you come 
to think of it, we give free education and even free 
meals, and the most hardened Conservative will 



182 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

acknowledge freely enough that the slum is not a 
good training ground for the rising generation. 
You cannot clear slums away in a hurry. The 
owners of such places are regarded if not with af- 
fection, at least with respect by the law and the 
law makers, but you can run up boarding establish- 
ments that will be infinitely superior to slums, and 
you can gather within them the outcasts of the capi- 
talistic system for proper feeding, clothing, edu- 
cation, and training. If children go wrong they 
are sent to special schools. All that is necessary 
is that instead of the children going wrong, the 
grown-ups shall go right, that they shall recognise 
how little their politics, prejudices and preconcep- 
tions matter by the side of one child's welfare. I 
go as far as to declare that it is the bounden duty 
of the State to make its gift of education effec- 
tive, that in making education compulsory it rec- 
ognised certain paramount duties that remain ful- 
filled only in the letter, and not in the spirit. One 
does not advocate change, however beneficial, for 
the mere sake of a nobler and wider life, such pleas 
do not gain prompt acceptance. Rather let it be 
stated quite frankly that, unless we turn the best 
aptitudes and capacities of the rising generation 
to the fullest account, we cannot hope to maintain 
our position in the face of competition. As a na- 
tion we handicap ourselves lamentably when we en- 



THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 183 

deavour to hold our own in the world with no more 
than a small part of our national assets realised 
or realisable. Children are our assets, and between 
the infant mortality on the one hand, blind product 
of ignorance, poverty, and apathy, and indifferent 
education on the other hand, we stand a very bad 
chance in the battle for supremacy. If we would 
increase, preserve, and train child life we could look 
to the future without misgiving. 

Edmund Burke, who will not be found to have 
given many hostages to socialism, declared that the 
citizens of a State are a partnership, that every 
member of such partnership has a right to a fair 
portion of all that society with all its combinations 
of skill and force can do in his favour, and that 
he has a right to the fruits of his own industry 
and the improvement of his own offspring. Let 
us be content to leave the case as Burke stated it 
in the time of George III., it will be seen that we 
have not yet gained for the average man the min- 
ima that the most eloquent statesman of his time 
prescribed. It is also clear that this claim for a 
full and free education is not the claim for charity, 
but the claim for a right that should be deemed 
inalienable. The grant of this right enriches while 
appearing to impoverish the State, and a step that 
some will deem socialistic and others revolutionary 
is fairly defined as common-sense procedure. We 



184 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

have at last reached the stage of agreeing that child 
life must be increased, preserved, and cultivated 
to the best ends, but there is a fatal inclination in 
this country to regard the theoretical acceptance of 
a principle as the equivalent of its complete prac- 
tical development. When you discuss the whole 
vital question with sensible people they prove, al- 
most without exception, in accord, but as soon as 
you say, "therefore let us endow maternity ', pass 
Pure Milk Bills, protect the mother from wrong- 
ful labour before and after confinement, and the 
child from mal-nutrition, educate the child when 
it is old enough to be educated, submit it to rea- 
sonable discipline and prepare it physically, 
morally, and mentally to fill the place for which it 
is best fitted in the workshop of the world," the 
theorists are unable to follow. Some constitutional 
timidity holds them. They will not gallop across 
country to reach their goal, fences and ditches 
frighten them, and all gates must be unfastened. 
It is well for those of us whose ambitions for Eng- 
land are inexhaustible, and who watch the shadow 
on Life's Dial moving inexorably towards the sun- 
set that we dare not despair of humanity. The pen, 
however ill we may wield it, gives us courage. We 
know that when our views are issued broadcast they 
resemble the seed in the Parable of the Sower, and 
that some worker who in days yet unborn will lead 



THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 185 

the children of the poor to their safe harbour out 
of the troubled waters on which their helpless lives 
are tossed, will have gathered a part of his inspira- 
tion and force from the thoughts of those who have 
gone before. 

What is it that taints our physical bravery as 
a nation with so much moral cowardice? Why is 
it that countless thousands will face shot and shell 
and wounds horrible beyond imagining with quiet 
heroism, and will yet shrink from the display of 
moral courage required to tell their rulers that, 
until the poorest child of England has its rights 
and its chance, they have failed in their duty, and 
that they must put the national house in order? 
I would wager that a majority, a large majority of 
both Houses of Parliament would be prepared to 
admit in private conversation all the claims I have 
put forward on behalf of the little ones, and that 
they would in public find a score of excuses for not 
pressing them. The most frequent excuse will of 
course be that after this war we shall lack the 
means. But I protest that whatever the date of 
peace, if it be a peace that meets our hopes, we 
shall be in a state in which we could find the means 
for at least another year of war if need be. Who 
will deny that it is better to create, cherish, and 
equip life than to devote our vast resources to its 
destruction? Equality, liberty, and fraternity are 



186 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the first-fruits of liberal education, the fine flower 
of progress. The war found our wealth accumu- 
lating and our people deteriorating, so slowly to 
be sure that they were able to pull themselves to- 
gether and appeal with certainty to the favourable 
verdict of world history, but yet deteriorating. 
Slums, prostitution, crime, insanity, drink, irre- 
sponsible wealth, all these evils were beginning to 
fester in the body politic, and war has applied the 
surgeon's knife to the open sore. Is peace to see 
it extirpated or allowed to grow again? I think 
in all honesty and sincerity that our treatment of 
the children will decide. If we will learn from 
our neighbours on the continent and our kinsmen 
across the Atlantic we may renew our strength. 
We may even justify the sacrifice of those who by 
reason of their love of England will never return 
to us. 

There is another and a sacred ground for this 
appeal. Let us remember the nameless dead, those 
whose heroism is expressed in part of a crowded 
line of small print, who had nothing but their lives 
to offer to their country, who had no chance in life 
and who when the bands of the body were breaking 
gave their last anxious thoughts to little ones 
doomed under our harsh system of social life to 
drift where and how they can. Who among those 
they died to leave in security and a sufficiency of 



THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 187 

the world's goods would come forward and say, 
"In spite of all these dead men did for me I will 
oppose a measure that will give their children use- 
ful and honourable lives, because what is left to 
me of life will be passed without some luxuries I 
have enjoyed hitherto?" I venture to say there 
are none who would put this sentiment in words. 
Yet there are thousands, tens of thousands whose 
deeds will say it for them, not because they are 
utterly selfish, callous, or hard-hearted, but be- 
cause they lack the saving grace of imagination. 
The most of the evil that disfigures the earth is due 
to this inability to see beyond our own needs. In 
the labour, the upheaval, the expense of a move- 
ment needed to equip the generation that will so 
soon succeed our own, we overlook the salient truth 
that it is no more than the fulfilment of a sol- 
emn duty, a pledge that binds us to the dead 
though it was never given. For who will suggest 
that the poor men, the bulk of those who fought 
and died for England, faced their fate to main- 
tain the slum and the gin palace and the labour of 
the poor prostitute who sells her body that she 
may eat to live, or drink to forget how she is liv- 
ing? Surely they died for the faith that was in 
them, with some dim fore-knowledge of happier 
days for those they left behind. We are the ex- 
ecutors of their unwritten testament. If, as so 



188 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

many believe, there is some form of consciousness 
in the unknown world of which they are the sud- 
den denizens, will they not be looking even now 
to see if we whose debt is so great have determined 
to pay it? And what better faith can we keep 
than by giving to the lives they have left behind 
the simple rights that were denied to them ? Every 
rich man, every member of the comfortable classes 
claims these benefits for his children, and if the 
war has given birth to a true spirit of brotherhood, 
the children of the poor cannot be forgotten. They 
lack the means, we have them. From this simple 
truth and the consequent, inexorable duty there is 
no escape with a clean conscience. 



XIX 

THE PRUSSIAN IN OUR MIDST 

War throws a blinding light upon the strength 
and the weakness of nations, and in England we 
may claim that we have faced the light without any 
revelations of which we need feel ashamed. Our 
mistakes have been rather of temperament than 
character, and whether in mustering our millions on 
the voluntary system or surrendering our hard- won 
liberties to an authority that has shown no sign 
of suffering from wisdom in excess, or giving fully 
and freely of our resources to the national cause, 
we may claim to have shown in our collective ca- 
pacity a generous response to the most varied and 
unexpected demands. Incidentally we have dis- 
covered in our midst a body of men, happily small 
in number, and not too significant in position, who 
would fain embody in our national life the worst 
vices that we are said to be fighting in the one 
foe that counts. These men, whose political sa- 
gacity exists in inverse ratio to their prejudices, 
are ever prompting the worst elements in our 

189 



190 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

rulers and threatening and intriguing against the 
others. 

To them war is no frightful necessity imposed 
upon a free and peaceful people, but a providen- 
tial opportunity for taking occasion by the hand; 
the voice is the voice of Prussia, but the hands 
are English hands. 

Our Prussians have always been in evidence, but, 
while the government of the empire was trusted 
to their friends, they were content to be quietly 
active. It is now nearly ten years since a Liberal 
Government came into power, and with the advent 
of Radical legislation our Prussians — they call 
them Tories over here — became active. 

When taxation threatened their superfluous 
wealth, they called heaven and earth to witness 
that such an outrage had no sanction. When the 
House of Lords, long the supreme force of obstruc- 
tion, was threatened they grew frantic, and at many 
a well-spread board declared themselves ready to 
dine — I mean die — in the last ditch before sub- 
mitting to the indignity of democratic government. 

When Home Rule was on the tapis they declared 
for revolution and civil war, and it needed Arma- 
geddon to burst the bladder of Sir Edward Car- 
son's threats. In justice be it said that when the 
tocsin sounded the Tories responded to the nation's 
need, and forgot for a time their ineffective selves. 



THE PRUSSIAN IN OUR MIDST 191 

But as soon as the gravity of the task was re- 
vealed they decided that the authorities were use- 
less without their judgment in aid. Cabal suc- 
ceeded criticism, plots of exquisite silliness were 
hatched, matched, and dispatched. Then came the 
call for more soldiers, and our Prussians turned 
Conscriptionists. 

The suggestion that conscription of men should 
be associated with conscription of wealth was dis- 
missed as an impertinence, it sufficed if all that 
others possess were sacrificed for the State. Our 
Prussians talked incessantly of men and duty, but 
where finance was concerned they were content to 
warn the worker not to squander his extra wages 
earned by unremitting labour during a week seven 
days long. They saw with clear vision the in- 
iquity of depriving the capitalist of half the wealth 
he is amassing as a result of the bloodiest war in 
history, and have protested almost in unison against 
the decree. They forgot with amazing ease that 
conscription is the force that has set the Prussian 
Jack-boot above all law human and divine; they 
clamoured for it here, doubtless with an eye upon 
the possibilities of coercing in days to come a pro- 
letariat of toilers forced to live under military law 
in time of peace. Disguised as patriots they thun- 
dered from a hundred platforms, they thumped 
a thousand tubs, while their hirelings in the Press 



192 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

wrote stodgily in admiration and support, point- 
ing out that certain hard- jawed, soulless politi- 
cians would alone avail to save England from it- 
self. As though England would endure to-day the 
undiluted political opinions of a Carson, a Milner, 
a Halsbury, or a Walter Long. Excellent men, 
no doubt, but never in their lives less than half a 
century behind the times. 

Politicians and papers were aided by the truth 
that even the voluntary system has its flaws and 
hardships, its inequalities and petty tyrannies, and 
the Prussian remedy for the whip of voluntary ser- 
vice is the scorpion of conscription. 

Those who do not agree with our Prussians are 
traitors to the height, although if our Prussians are 
patriots Dr. Johnson's definition of patriotism be- 
comes dangerously true. 

The question of peace discussion has been the 
latest consideration of these gentry. Personally 
I have no use for peace until we have won our 
victory or suffered our defeat. I believe we shall 
win, and that our first duties as victors will be to 
take whatever steps are needed to give peace per- 
manence. 

But I cannot follow our Prussians over one 
yard of their mile-long way. They would impose 
the methods of Berlin and Vienna upon all who 
dare to have opinions of their own, they would 



THE PRUSSIAN IN OUR MIDST 193 

repress individuality, they would out Herod the 
Herods of the censorship who daily murder so much 
childishness, they would in fact reduce free men 
to the level of the citizens who serve their rulers 
for "cannon fodder." 

In one of the reactionary dailies written by To- 
ries for Tories I have been reading with infinite 
disgust a tribute of admiration to the "Stern Meth- 
ods" of the Central Empires in dealing with "War 
Cranks," i.e. with people whose sense of what they, 
rightly or wrongly, believe to be truth is so strong 
that they will sacrifice position, even life, to tell 
the truth when they see it. "Hungarians," writes 
our Prussian, "who were only suspected of not 
approving of the war were interned or publicly 
shot." Such a policy has more to justify it "than 
have the liberties which are accorded to certain 
sects who with their ideas form an insignificant, and 
almost negligible minority." These sentiments are 
even worse than the English used to express them. 
One Hungarian publicist, M. Pazmaudy, aged 
sixty-nine, went to prison for three months for 
writing an unpublished letter to a newspaper in 
which he denounced the war as wholesale murder. 
A teacher who pointed out to his class that war 
is the fruit of rulers' jealousy rather than of the 
people's animosities, a statement that is probably 
true of nine-tenths of the war recorded by his- 



194 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

tory, was condemned to three years' hard labour. 
Our anonymous Prussian rejoices in these barbari- 
ties, and a paper supposed to represent the edu- 
cated classes of England is not ashamed to print 
this revelation of an unsound or distorted mind. 

In the early days of the war, Bernard Shaw 
reminded us that we, too, have our Junkers, and 
his statement has been proved up to the hilt. Our 
soldiers and sailors are righting the Prussians 
abroad, and it is the duty of those of us who can- 
not help beyond England's boundaries, to fight 
the Prussians at home, for it is abundantly clear 
that we have them in our midst, those who are 
working night and day to give us Militarism, Ab- 
solutism, and every form of Central European slav- 
ery under another name. They desire an Eng- 
land of conscript workmen, they seek the destruc- 
tion of Trade Unionism, and the abolition of so- 
cialism, though it is only by adopting that dread 
creed that the Government contrived to save our 
credit and to feed us. They wish to destroy the 
German militarism, and what it stands for, but 
only to take over the whole business, lock, stock, 
and barrel as a going concern. The truth is that 
the Tories can no more change their skin than 
the leopard his spots. 

It is to them the ideal, merely the ideal, in the 
wrong hands. They see beyond the horizon of war 



THE PRUSSIAN IN OUR MIDST 195 

the dawning of a democratic era that shall destroy 
privilege, and make our national freedom greater 
than it has ever been, and the prospect is more 
bitter to them than defeat. So while our men, 
so recently civilians, are proving the strength and 
resources of comparative freedom — what has been 
done is as little with what still remains to be done 
— our Prussians are putting forward all manner 
of chains for unfettered limbs, and are declaring 
that without them nothing can save the Empire. 
It is pleasant to reflect that after this war comes 
to its appointed close the vigorous democracies of 
Canada and Australia that have followed the 
United States along the road of political freedom 
will be finding representatives at the Council Board 
of Empire, and that they will be alert and vig- 
orous to put an end to the machinations of our 
Prussians whose attack upon liberty will not read- 
ily be forgotten. When we attempt to measure 
the sacrifices that have been made in freedom's 
name since August, 1914, when we remember the 
spirit that has led men contentedly into the jaws 
of death, when we understand what our fighters 
have fought for, there is an indescribable sense 
of loathing for the men who, secure in England, 
are plotting to transfer Prussian principles across 
the North Sea. Their failure to achieve anything 



196 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

commensurate with the villainy of the attempt is 
neither palliation nor excuse. 

Every one who has studied social conditions 
knows that our national ability to pit the unpre- 
pared British Empire against Germany armed to 
the teeth, has been due to the fact that our Empire 
holds millions who believe from the bottom of their 
hearts that it is worth living in and dying for. 
What would the Prussians make of our Empire if 
they were allowed to direct it? A happy hunting- 
ground for Junkers and a hell upon Earth for 
free men is the very best that they could accomplish. 

Political insight, democratic foresight, prevision of 
the inevitable march of events, all these gifts are de- 
nied them. They have no sympathy with any freedom 
that could exist beyond the realms of the privileged 
classes, they are too blind to see the writing on the 
wall that tells them they have been found wanting. 

This war has witnessed plenty of mistakes, some 
trivial, some serious; it has witnessed the birth of 
a certain number of oppressive and retrograde 
measures, and the death of national liberties of 
which we look with hope, even with certainty for 
the joyful resurrection. 

Whatever has been bad, retrograde, or danger- 
ous to democracy has won the unstinted approval 
of our Prussians; every other act of our rulers 
they have condemned. 



XX 

THE GROWN-UP GIRLS OF ENGLAND 

Before the war, I heard some shrewd feminists 
say that the frivolity associated with the life of 
women at the time when they have ceased to be 
girls and have "come out," is a matter of environ- 
ment rather than choice. They went so far as to 
assert that if a worthier goal were offered, a ma- 
jority would seek it without a moment's hesitation. 
For all my sympathy with feminism, despite my 
heartfelt conviction that man needs woman's help 
in the task of administering the world that lies be- 
yond the home, I had doubts, grave doubts. I 
thought that those who said these things had gone 
a little beyond their brief, and I remembered the 
French aphorism, "la jeunesse n'a quun jour." It 
seemed to me that an innate knowledge of the time- 
limit was the foundation of frivolity, and here, per- 
haps, I was looking back thirty years or more to 
the radiant season of my own debut, and was re- 
membering how the girls who became matrons were 
expected to play the rest of their part in the life 
symphony on muted strings. True it is that I 

197 



198 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

helped to post-date the passing of the girl and the 
coming of the matron, but in those feverish times 
we all thought that the race was to the swift. 

It may be that this conviction coloured my views ; 
I believed that for the vast majority of young girls 
with prospects of a good time, there would be no 
pleasure in serious endeavour of any kind: that 
a sense of responsibility could not precede the 
State recognition of women and a sweeping meas- 
ure of educational reform. As recently as the sum- 
mer season of 1914, I found the new players fever- 
ishly excited by the old, old game, and pleasure 
instead of losing its savour seemed to have wid- 
ened its boundaries and assumed shapes more fan- 
tastic than ever. I heard girls who were standing 
on the threshold of their career prattling of the 
joys to come as though life did not compass within 
its horizon one solitary sorrow or disappointment. 
Women of experience are, I think, stirred by these 
enthusiasms in their sisters or daughters, or young 
friends: they have learned a part of life's lesson, 
and know glad memories for an inalienable posses- 
sion. It follows that they rejoice to see those who 
are near and dear to them treading the primrose 
path in the spring of their years, realising that 
when they look over the old road in the autumn 
days, their memory will help to gladden it with 
even fairer blossoms. If we know youth for the 



THE GROWN-UP GIRLS OF ENGLAND 199 

season of mental intoxication, we are not the less 
grateful to the gods who grant it to one and all, 
and if we are quite honest with ourselves we have 
been rather a little sorry for the girls who are seri- 
ous before their time. But, while so many happy 
children, for after all they were little more, were 
bringing their healthy appetite to the banquet of 
life, "dawn was at hand to strike the loud feast 
dumb." 

The effect of the upheaval upon the girls who 
had been presented in 1914, or would in the ordi- 
nary course of events have made their debut since, 
has been startling, and it has taught me that not 
only are the working classes sound at the core — 
I never doubted this — but the leisured classes are 
in no whit inferior. Only an insignificant minority 
pursue pleasure at any price, and find in the hor- 
rors of our time a medium for publicity or dissi- 
pation. Over the not inconsiderable circle that I 
have the opportunity of observing there came, in 
the vast majority of cases, a startling change. The 
opportunities for frivolity under the rose were ac- 
cepted only by a few who are constitutionally and 
irretrievably decadent, or actually vicious. The 
others passed pleasure by, sought duty wherever 
it was to be found, and became supremely happy 
in its pursuit. They taught me to realise that my 
feminist friends were right, and that environment 



200 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

which could have moulded their plastic natures in 
one mould, had no trouble in moulding them in an- 
other. 

To do full justice to the fortunately circum- 
stanced girls of England, for I take it that what 
is true of London and many country homes will 
apply elsewhere, it is necessary to remember that 
they have known less of the horrors of war than 
their sisters of almost all belligerent countries. 
Some, very few, have heard one or two bombs 
dropped from air-ships, the rest have seen no more 
than the wounded men who are sufficiently well to 
be brought over to England. They cannot even 
have visualised the full tragedy of the struggle as 
French and Belgian girls must have done, and, 
above all, they are seldom imaginative, but just as 
they were prepared less than two years ago to en- 
joy as good a time as life could afford, they are 
now committed to the hardest tasks within their 
competence. What they have lost in pleasure, they 
have gained in self-respect, and a sense of true citi- 
zenship; above all, they realise that they are of 
signal use to the State in the hour of its exceed- 
ing great need. Part of the role so long denied to 
them they have assumed, not only without chal- 
lenge, but with acclamation. 

They have one additional advantage in their new 
sphere : they have never known the pursuits of nor- 



THE GROWN-UP GIRLS OF ENGLAND 201 

mal times. While the doors of the ball-room and 
all that lies beyond were still shut, the doors of the 
Temple of Janus were torn asunder. They have 
no regrets, they do not miss the flavour of what 
they have never tasted. Life is so full for them 
that if pleasure were within their grasp they would 
lack the leisure as well as the inclination to grasp 
it. The example of fathers, brothers, boy friends, 
is an unending stimulus; all those they love best 
are looking to them with a gratitude or admiration 
that no pursuit of pleasure could have evoked. 
They have realised the high tension of the hour, 
they have risen silently and unostentatiously to the 
heights. Such tragedy as has come into their lives 
— and the mourning that so many wear is eloquent 
beyond all speech — has increased rather than 
diminished their labours ; it has brought them nearer 
to the actuality of things. Where one hoped that 
all would gather roses many have gathered rue, 
but they have learned to know it by the older name, 
herb-of-grace. They wear it as they work, and 
it has become one of the symbols of the bond that 
binds those who serve with those who suffer. 

I have seen the girls of whom I write labouring 
with deft yet unaccustomed hands in the canteens, 
undertaking in the hospitals the menial work that 
falls to those who are yet untrained, giving to pain 
longer hours than they would have given to pleas- 



202 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

lire in happy times. They bring to their tasks the 
subtle indefinite charm that is the gift of their 
hour and was intended for a setting so different. 
Is it a part of their reward that their lives should 
not lack a generous gift of high romance? I can- 
not recall in any season over which my memory 
has control so many engagements and marriages 
as there have been of late. The old huckstering 
conditions would seem to have passed, the girls are 
no longer weighing chances, the men are no longer 
calculating coldly. Each sees the other at best. 
The girl knows that the lad who has given all and 
risked all for his country must be sound at heart, 
and that his scars are honourable; the young man 
knows that he cannot go wrong in choosing a girl 
who has left pleasure for duty, who has found high 
ideals and pursues them. These unions coming 
about in hours of deepest uncertainty, when the 
bride of one month may be the widow of the next, 
are calculated to bring out what is best in both, 
for the natural affection is leavened by mutual re- 
spect. I have heard worldly minded parents grieve, 
some have brought their tales of woe to my utterly 
unsympathetic ear; I rejoice in these marriages, 
and believe they are of happiest augury for the 
State. Surely those who wed under these condi- 
tions may hope to live on the high plane of ideal- 
ism longer than those whose unions have been die- 



THE GROWN-UP GIRLS OF ENGLAND 203 

tated by what is mis-called prudence, while the 
fruits of unions consummated in such solemn 
hours when the future of Europe trembles in the 
balances of God, will be a source of strength in the 
years to come. They will surely not be like the 
offspring of exaggerated comfort or monstrous 
luxury. 

It seems to me, reviewing the accomplishment 
of so many girls I know best, that war, for all its 
tragedy, may well leave the poor remains of our 
civilisation better than it was in the season of our 
opulence. Without regard to money or to good 
looks some of the best elements of the race have 
mated, each partner to the union understanding 
in fashion hitherto unimaginable not only that the 
Empire is worth the best we have to offer, but that 
one and all, regardless of the world's favours, are 
bringing their sacrifice. The minorities, noisy or 
silent, with which we must hereafter deal, the resi- 
due of profit-hunters and pleasure-seekers, pass al- 
most out of mind as one sees the extraordinary 
transformation that war has wrought in a class tha' 
was supposed to be utterly deaf to any call save 
the call of amusement. That there have been larger 
tributes to the national cause is a commonplace, 
that there has been a more striking one I, at least, 
deny. 

Who was the cynic who said that woman was the 



204 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

last animal that man would civilise? I hope and 
believe he has not lived as long as his libel, and 
yet I could wish that somewhere in the realms 
reserved for liars he could be permitted to see a 
few at least of the sights that have gladdened and 
stimulated me in the past twelve months, ever since 
the women workers in the Empire's cause became 
fully representative of every class in the realm. 



XXI 

THE SOCIAL HORIZON 

Very early in the war, almost before the Expedi- 
tionary Force was under arms, the Government was 
forced by the grave urgency of the national case 
to apply the principles of socialism to certain out- 
standing problems. To name only one instance, 
we may mention the work of the railways. Social- 
ists have always urged that the railroads should 
be taken over by Government in the national in- 
terest, and countless reams of paper have been 
wasted by individualists to demonstrate the impos- 
sibility. But needs grew paramount, and the Gov- 
ernment, by a stroke of the pen, took the railroads 
into its inexpert keeping. Nothing has happened 
to make the country regret the change. The fash- 
ion in which our railways (with a few notable ex- 
ceptions) are conducted is so utterly bad and so 
profoundly inefficient, that Government, in giving 
precedence to Government business, made them 
very little worse. Fares are a trifle higher, trains 
rather less frequent, carriages dirtier than hereto- 
fore, but Government's proper needs and unprac- 

205 



206 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

tised handling could do little or nothing to depress 
the normal standard. As the war progressed, and 
various common-sense measures were required to 
deal with war profits, war contracts, and war crises 
generally, it was recognised with something akin 
to dismay by the hierarchy that lives behind the 
times that in many instances socialism had an- 
ticipated common-sense. Then a strange thing hap- 
pened. In a very unguarded moment, Mr. Runci- 
man, that bright young man whose statesmanlike 
qualities and keen sympathy with our poor ship- 
owners have endeared him to a small minority at 
least of English-speaking people, was heard to de- 
clare before a pained and startled House of Com- 
mons that where Socialism was practical and met 
the needs of the hour, he was prepared to adopt it. 
In other words, he would not discard a useful meas- 
ure because it was socialistic in origin or tendencies ! 
What magnanimity ; what a sterling recognition of 
a nation's needs! 

Nobody perhaps quite knows what measure of 
concession to hard truth was here intended, but as 
a statement made by a President of the Board of 
Trade, the utterance deserved more attention than 
it received. Perhaps the Press Bureau asked news- 
papers to take no marked notice of a hard-worked 
"statesman's" slip of the tongue. One would wager 
that it did not pass altogether unrebuked by those 



THE SOCIAL HORIZON 207 

descendants of the wise men of Gotham, who would 
rather see the Empire lost by party politicians than 
saved by Socialists or Socialism. 

It is a curious fact, and one that the historian 
of the future will surely acknowledge, that Indi- 
vidualism has been discredited by the war, and that 
the appeal of both our leaders and misleaders, 
whatever the colour of their party-political opin- 
ions, has been to the principles underlying Social- 
ism. Even in Russia, an autocracy, a land in which 
the Tsar comes in the popular mind very near to 
God, the appeal to the nation has been an appeal, 
however unconsciously, to Socialism. The root 
principle of Socialism lies in a great National Act. 
The nation must work together for the national 
good. So far has this idea developed that in the 
last days of February, a reputed reactionary, M. 
Markoff, rose in the Duma to implore the Govern- 
ment "to withdraw its shield from the old gang of 
officials who look upon their country's adversities 
merely as a favourable opportunity for increasing 
their perquisites" (Daily Telegraph, Feb. 28th). 
Here, under the pressure of giant circumstance, 
we find an appeal made for the united action and 
the national act. In Germany, as all our respon- 
sible, and not a little of the irresponsible, Press has 
frankly admitted, the Socialist party is the only 
one that has kept its head, and endeavoured in very 



208 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

difficult circumstances to preserve ideals. The 
Vorwarts } leading organ of German Socialism, 
though it regards the war as an evil for which Ger- 
many was not responsible, has courageously op- 
posed all the actions of the governing class that 
have tended to lower the character of the German 
people, and I have heard some of the best informed 
students of European politics declare that, had So- 
cial Democracy been allowed another ten years of 
peaceful development throughout the German Em- 
pire, no German ruler would have dared provoke 
a war for the hegemony of Europe. They cannot 
deny that Socialism, in its International aspect, 
was making for the brotherhood of man. No other 
force in national life was working with any ap- 
proach to equal strength and sincerity along the 
same road and in pursuit of the same goal. 

Unfortunately, under the conditions that beset 
and damn all Europe, the people have no voice in 
the supreme decision of war. Their privilege is 
to fight those with whom they have no quarrel. 
Theirs, too, to sacrifice in appalling numbers their 
fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, to give up 
their homes and savings, to acquiesce blindly in 
every evil that marches in the wake of strife. Just 
as the men ordered from the trenches to be mown 
down by shot and shell are given or offered some 
form of raw spirit to stimulate and even intoxicate 



THE SOCIAL HORIZON 209 

them, so before war is declared, Governments, 
through the medium of a docile Press, circulate 
the lies best calculated to make the imminent enor- 
mity appear inevitable and just. As soon as the 
declaration of war is made, the common patriotism 
of nations obscures every other issue. Men must 
fight for hearth and home, for fatherland and all 
that it implies. Primal necessity is speaking, and 
on every banner of every nation the ominous words 
"Vse victis" are inscribed. The people who make 
war and, somewhere out of Death's ample range 
direct it, understand the psychology of nations; 
their skill in all the arts of deception is unrivalled. 
Yet of all the lessons enforced by the war there 
is none that has come with greater force to all 
whose minds are not hermetically sealed than the 
lesson that Individualism has failed completely in 
the hour of the world's extremist need. The price 
we have paid for it within the compass of two brief 
years is the total loss of millions of lives, the future 
ineffectiveness of still more, the sheer, brutal waste 
of wealth more than sufficient to have solved all 
the economic troubles of Europe. Countless think- 
ers in all belligerent countries have been forced to 
the conclusion that Socialism is the only force capa- 
ble of rendering what is left of Europe capable and 
adequate to the demands upon it. Great Britain, 
insular by act of God and the general tendency of 



210 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

the population, is fully prepared to accept Social- 
ism as long as it is not called by that name, for 
such is the state of our mental development that 
we judge all political goods by their labels. In 
other countries, where social, political, and eco- 
nomic conditions are not merely discussed, but un- 
derstood, where the people's representatives are re- 
quired to have some minimum of knowledge in 
addition to birth, money, and influence, these con- 
cessions to popular ignorance and prejudice have 
been swept aside. The recognition of the neces- 
sity for sweeping changes is made without fear. 
Even in Germany, when Dr. Frank, the eminent 
Socialist, was reported killed, a statement was pub- 
lished to the effect that the Kaiser had expressed 
his regrets at the death of a man whose gifts would 
have helped the country in the days when schemes 
of reconstruction are under consideration. 

This may have been no more than a sop to the 
social Democrats, of whom upwards of two mil- 
lions have been called to the colours, but even if this 
be so, the sop is a significant one, and could not 
have been lightly given. 

In stricken Belgium, the man who comes next 
to King Albert in sheer patriotic endeavour and 
in the gift of inspiring the nation to hold up its 
head under conditions hard for any of us to realise, 
is the famous Socialist leader, Emile Vandervelde. 



THE SOCIAL HORIZON 211 

He is not only at the head of the Belgian Ministry 
of War, but is King Albert's most trusted adviser ; 
his gifts overshadow those of his equally devoted 
and patriotic colleagues. The thrill of horror and 
shame that ran through France when Jean Jaures 
fell to the assassin's bullet in the opening days of 
war, was felt far beyond the French borders. Even 
in the tense excitement of that unhappy season, the 
French Government, after voting the murdered pa- 
triot a public funeral, posted in every Commune 
throughout the country its expression of horror and 
regret. To-day, a Socialist Prime Minister directs 
with rare skill and courage the fortunes of the Re- 
public; the French National Council has not hesi- 
tated to summon to its ranks such an uncompro- 
mising foe of Individualism in whatever form as 
Jules Guesde. None, having eyes to see, ears to 
hear with, and even a modest gift of comprehension, 
can fail to gather from this the tendency of the 
great Power with which we are now so closely al- 
lied. Of all the European nations there is none 
in which the gift of political sagacity is so strongly 
marked as it is in France, none to which the gifts 
of political foresight and courage have been 
granted in equal measure. What Paris thinks to- 
day, London must be at least prepared to discuss 
in the very near future. 

There is no secret about the cause of the action 



212 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

that France and Belgium have taken of set pur- 
pose. The whole essence of a successful struggle 
is unity — unity of purpose, of feeling and of 
thought. The working classes, now as ever, are 
bearing in every country the bulk of the burden 
of war. Sane Governments must needs endeavour 
to secure for labour an adequate representation in 
their midst. Knowing that their proper interests 
are being subordinated, if at all, to the national 
cause, and not for private profit or exploitation, 
labour feels that it is secure, and will give all it 
has to give with a generosity that may be rivalled, 
but can never be excelled. The white flame of 
patriotism is only kept glowing if it is fed by the 
efforts of a whole community. This result will 
never be quite realised here in England until all 
interests are united in a Cabinet that stands just 
now for very little more than the propertied classes. 
I admit, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Brace, and Mr. War- 
die, have all been given some office to placate the 
great Trade Unions from which so much is de- 
manded to-day. But this is not enough. Our 
Cabinet of aged ostriches still hides its head in the 
bushes of precedent and prejudice, content to be- 
lieve that what it does not wish to see can have no 
existence, and fortified in this strange method, that 
would be comic if it were not tragic, by all sec- 
tions of the capitalistic Press. International So- 



THE SOCIAL HORIZON 213 

cialism is gathering its forces throughout Europe, 
and in the United States as well, to impose per- 
manent peace on kings and other anachronisms. 
Thinking people in all the centres of civilisation 
agree that this war is sounding the knell of privi- 
lege. But England remains content to be ruled 
by lawyers, professional politicians, mid- Victorian 
relics, and doctrinaires. Socialism, the master force 
of the immediate future, is deliberately ignored. 
Well might Father Adderley ( Canon the Honour- 
able James Adderley, so beloved in the slums of 
Plaistow and Birmingham) deplore in his recently 
published memoirs, the absence from Parliament 
or from the Government itself, of H. M. Hynd- 
man, the Nestor of English Socialism. The as- 
tonishing part of our national attitude towards this 
crisis is that the men who really guide and influ- 
ence our public opinion, the live men of letters, are 
for the most part Socialists, and make no secret 
of their principles, nor have they ever hesitated 
to voice their suspicion of what Matthew Arnold 
called "the unelastic pedantry of theorising Liber- 
alism." Does this Government think that all this 
teaching has fallen or is falling on deaf ears ? Does 
it forget that it was the French Encyclopaedists 
who made the French Revolution? They taught a 
discontented and unhappy people to think and the 
people did the rest. Our rulers have always moved 



214 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

respectfully behind the times, but, to do them what 
justice we may, be it remembered that they never 
expected to live through seasons that impel the 
times to move with giant and sudden strides. 

Now, even in the latter days, all these things 
have come upon them. Will they, can they, rise 
to the height of the occasion? 



XXII 

HOW SHALL WE MINISTER TO WORLD DISEASED? 

It is not without a certain significance that, while 
French and German soldiery were sacrificing them- 
selves by their thousands to the Gods of War in and 
around the blood-stained village street of Douau- 
mont, while our soldiers were holding on to the line 
of the Tigris, near whose source Russian forces 
were marching southward to the rescue, the Royal 
Commission appointed to investigate what is euphe- 
mistically called "Social Disease," issued its report. 
The coincidence from certain view-points is star- 
tling. 

The report, definitely limited as to its scope, 
sober in its statement, and appalling in its revela- 
tion, is a solemn reminder to the world of civilised 
men that there are enemies equally deadly and 
more insidious than those with whom any belligerent 
is concerned. The victims of the diseases discussed 
probably outnumber, in Great Britain alone, all 
her defenders on sea and land. Four millions of 
our population, with power to add to their num- 
ber, are at grips with a deadly enemy in various 

215 



216 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

stages of its virulence; an enemy who will "visit 
the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third 
and fourth generation." Nay more, the Commis- 
sioners whose trained minds lend solid value to 
their every utterance, assure us that after a war 
an excessive incidence of disease is certain to occur, 
even in districts previously free. There are other 
significant comments. "Our evidence," they tell 
us, "tends to show that the communication of 
disease is frequently due to intoxicants, and there 
is no doubt that the growth of temperance among 
the population would help to bring about an amelio- 
ration. We are also conscious of the fact that 
overcrowded and insanitary dwellings contribute 
to the spread of disease, and from improvements in 
this direction we should expect some diminution of 
its prevalence." 

Let us consider the full meaning of these vivid 
comments. When war is over, we shall celebrate 
the coming of peace throughout the length and 
breadth of these islands. Countless offerings will 
be laid before the altar of the brewer and the dis- 
tiller; it will be almost dangerous to be an ab- 
stainer. For a time, at least, the barriers of re- 
straint will be torn down. Something known as 
"good fellowship" will at once dictate and excuse 
an orgie. The discipline that weak minds require 
will be honoured in the breach rather than the ob- 



A WORLD DISEASED 217 

servance, and "an excessive incidence of disease is 
certain to occur, even in districts previously free." 
When a town is successfully invaded, and a 
soldiery, grown reckless after lying cheek by jowl 
with death flings his self-discipline, mercy, and re- 
straint to the winds, the world that has not lost its 
reason is sick at heart. When peace is proclaimed, 
and the return to civil life is associated with a li- 
cence that outrages the living and damns the un- 
born, there is apparently no authority that can 
intervene, no public opinion capable of making it- 
self felt. The living, and those upon whom the 
heaviest burden of life is to be imposed, are alike 
unprotected. Not only is this so, but the conditions 
that must make for their undoing are cultivated in 
the interests of those who flood the land with spirits 
and malt liquors. What if our slums help infec- 
tion to spread? Are not slum-owners often men 
of repute, some of whom sit in the high seats of 
judgment and help to administer a world they are 
willing to degrade still further in the sacred name 
of rent? Do we not make a man a Peer if he can 
brew sufficient beer? The Commissioners know 
better than to plead for an England sober or an 
England adequately housed. Theirs not to pre- 
sume to attack vested interests. They have dared 
greatly in pointing out what the slum and the gin 
palaces contribute to the spread of most loathsome 



218 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

diseases under heaven. There they must stop. 
They know their public. "Improvement in the so- 
cial conditions and in the moral standard may be 
slow." They have realised what our modern po- 
litical conditions stand for throughout Great Brit- 
ain. They even admit that there may be no money 
for improvement; European civilisation, however 
inadequate to human needs, however imperfect and 
incomplete, can only be destroyed at heavy ex- 
pense. The destruction demands the best life-blood 
of every belligerent nation and all available finan- 
cial resources. What can be left to combat "so- 
cial disease," cancer, consumption, drink, slums, 
and the other evils that destroy even more than 
war, but have nothing arresting or spectacular in 
their methods ? The Commissioners plead, it would 
seem, with more of earnestness than hope. 

Perhaps the most appalling side of "social 
disease" is due to its utter absence of respect for 
persons. We could wish in the interests of hu- 
manity as at present constituted that the germs 
could themselves be inoculated with genuine Eng- 
lish snobbery, so that they would refrain from at- 
tacking "high personages." Apparently, germs 
are untutored things. They ignore class distinc- 
tions. They attack with equal impartiality the 
drunken soldier of a garrison town, the sailor set 
free, after a long voyage, in an evil seaport with 



A WORLD DISEASED 219 

money burning holes in his pocket, and the crowned 
head who, in the days of his indiscretion, lived as 
lewdly as the soldier or sailor without the excuse 
of either. The wages of sin is death. "Social 
disease" affects the ordered function of the brain, 
and when that brain is in the skull of one who con- 
trols the destinies of Empire, the dread death- 
wages must be paid by the rank and file of his 
subjects. Nobody has dared yet to write fully 
and freely of the influence of social disease upon 
the decrees of European rulers. Though the hide- 
ous facts are known well enough in certain cir- 
cles, they are hardly discussed. Perhaps the scan- 
dal is one from which the sharpest pen shrinks ap- 
palled. Consider the cercle prive from which Eu- 
rope's dynasts spring, the tendencies of upbring- 
ing, the intermarriage, the temptation, the effect 
upon narrow minds and exhausted stocks. The 
light is beginning to shine upon thrones. The 
world is beginning to ask why so much of madness 
is manifest in the ranks of rulers, and whether in 
the wide interests of humanity the breed is not of 
more importance than the blood. At present the 
question is asked sotto voce,, the time is surely com- 
ing when it will ring through Europe. But for 
the moment there is a still larger question at stake. 
The publication of the Royal Commission's Re- 
port is a warning and a challenge to the democracy, 



220 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

not only of Great Britain, but of the world. It tells 
them that the real, the enduring enemy, is not the 
German, the Briton, the Frenchman, or the Rus- 
sian. The enemy is not on the battlefield, but in the 
homeland, in the street, perhaps in the house. He 
has invaded every country in Europe without ex- 
ception. Battleships, heavy ordnance, elaborate 
trenches, are of no avail. Treaties of peace cannot 
be made effective until they are signed between a 
vigilant and victorious democracy on the one hand 
and a defeated, privileged class on the other. 

The national resources required to meet a foul 
disease are taken from us to-day in measure be- 
yond precedent to meet an expenditure for which 
the demand was created by kings and statesmen. 
There was no reference to the will of the people; 
until such time as that will could be neither logi- 
cal nor effective. The world's working men, deci- 
mated to satisfy the ambitions of their misrulers, 
must return in greatly diminished numbers and 
with lives crippled and wasted by the million, to 
find the old enemies at their gate and the worst 
and ugliest of these enemies prepared to take ad- 
vantage of peace by waging more deadly war. And 
those who will administer their shattered dynasties 
will include members of families that are notori- 
ously tainted by "social disease." Surely viler 
prospect were hard to find. 



A WORLD DISEASED 221 

Yet there is not under heaven an evil for which 
there is no remedy. If the people sacrificed to 
armament makers, diplomats, and dynasts will join 
hands across the world they can overcome the en- 
emies without and within. Their strength, if they 
will but put it forward, is irresistible, far greater 
than they know. They should have no more illu- 
sions. They are many ; those who exploit them are 
few. Before the war the great international move- 
ment was growing. A series of ultimatums, of 
frenzied calls to patriotism, racial prejudice and 
fear, frosted the ripening blossoms, but could not 
reach the root that lies deep down in the heart 
of suffering humanity. Internationalism will rise 
again. Those who have a finger upon the pulse 
of the workers the world over, know that the life 
forces, depressed for a time, are giving a grow- 
ing vigour to the beat. Already they see the rulers 
of the world deploring the catastrophe that they 
brought about, becoming conscious that their 
hands drip blood. Already they see that normal 
evils are not merely remaining unabated but are 
actually growing, that a world returned to sanity 
and humility will find more vileness to combat and 
fewer means to its aid. It will look for a lead. 

That is why there is so much reason to hope that 
the United States will not be drawn into war. 
There, the workers of Europe are already begin- 



A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

ning to look for guidance, direction, help, and ac- 
tual co-operation in the ultimate struggle for free- 
dom, that when war is over they may combat the 
yet worse evils around them. Our thoughts turn 
to the New World, redeemed from kings and popes 
and the tragic remains of feudalism, and, largely 
on that account, at peace. Consider the vile, naked 
truth that we in England may lack the means ade- 
quately to conquer the "social disease," the white 
scourge, the slum problem, and other shames of 
man's own making because our national resources 
are being sacrificed to such destruction as sun, 
moon, and stars have never looked upon since first 
they lit the earth. 

Our rulers, our statesmen, our parliaments, our 
laws alike, have failed us. Judge them by their 
fruits, as hereafter surely they must be judged. 
There is nothing left between Europe and the abyss 
but the solidarity of the working classes, the spread 
of democracy, the overthrow of every effete insti- 
tution that exists for no better reason than that 
it has been allowed to exist so long. We, the Inter- 
nationalists, look to the United States, that island 
of sanity set in a raging sea of madness. We look 
to it for light and leading, for encouragement and 
support. It is the only great power left to read 
the lessons of world- war without prejudice. I 
would like the terrible indictment penned against 



A WORLD DISEASED 223 

our modern civilisation by the Royal Commission 
to be read by every thinking American of whose 
political faith democracy is the vital essence.* 

"This is that Blossom on our human tree 
Which opens once in many myriad years 
But opened, fills the world with Wisdom's scent 
And Love's dropped honey." 

* I would like it studied in the red light of war, that our 
cousins oversea with their generous instincts, quick judgment 
and resourceful minds may be stimulated to assist the workers 
of all nations when once this terrible chapter of our life is 
closed. United action will make impossible in the future all 
wars save that which is waged against disease, privilege, and 
ineffectiveness. 






XXIII 

HOW I WOULD WOEK FOR PEACE 

Foe a long time past, ever since it was realised that 
the countless campaigns to which we are committed 
would be long in following their appointed course, 
costly in progress and revolting in detail, all man- 
ner of people have come forward to explain that 
they have mastered the causes and the cure of war. 
Belligerent and neutral countries alike have put 
forward their panaceas, and Great Britain has held 
some particularly active groups, perhaps because, 
while strife fills her horizon, only Zeppelins have 
succeeded in bringing the actualities home to those 
who are not serving. Then, too, we have always 
had in the country a number of men and women 
who believe honestly that war is a madness and 
crime, that their contention can be proved by ar- 
gument, and that because they imagine war does 
not really benefit anybody, nobody really wants 
war. 

There are others who do not go quite so far as 
this, being content to saddle policies or individuals 
with the responsibility. Secret diplomacy is, we are 

224 



HOW I WOULD WORK FOR PEACE 225 

assured, a fruitful source of wars, and we are in- 
vited to place our cards on the table, and instruct 
our diplomats to tell the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth. Out of these theories are 
born societies like the Union of Democratic Con- 
trol, and many unnecessary speeches by people who 
are apt to confuse martyrdom and unpopularity. 

War gives rise to optimists, like Mr. Henry 
Ford, who, quite oblivious to gibes and sneers, char- 
ters a steamer and proceeds to Europe, that he may 
call upon belligerents to cease their quarrels, be- 
cause even from the distant city of Detroit, he 
can see how foolishly they are behaving. 

It may be easy to laugh or to sneer at these 
manifestations. I find it impossible to do either. 
In every one of these efforts, great or small, nota- 
ble or ludicrous, something of the spirit that is 
helping the world to progress is made manifest. 
If men and women who have little in life except 
the respect of their circle, deliberately sacrifice that 
precious asset for the sake of saying what they be- 
lieve to be the truth, they are worthy of regard, 
and let us remember that most of us are amongst 
those who would rather be stoned than laughed at. 

If I have criticism for panaceas that are to rid 
the nation of war as patent medicine-vendors offer 
to rid the individual of disease, if I look a little 
askance at all schemes of international betterment 



226 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

by will of the people, it is because all equality of 
reasoning power, all movement towards higher 
things, is conditioned by education. 

We are very much like our fruit-trees. If you 
plant one hundred trees of equally good appear- 
ance and quality on a good soil, and you attend 
to fifty, and leave the other fifty to look after them- 
selves, what is going to happen? The trees that 
have clean soil round the roots, that are pruned and 
washed and shaped in the way they should go will 
yield abundantly, look well, and live long ; the others 
will be uncertain in their growth, unattractive in 
aspect, and liable to fail or become diseased. 

In England we pay scant heed to the prosperity 
of the race, we are far more concerned with the 
prosperity of the race-course. We have been taught 
to care less for the well-being of the public than 
of the publican. 

I do not write in any bitterness of spirit, but I 
remember how long, and successfully the race- 
course struggled against the war, how definitely 
Mr. Lloyd George's attempt to end the drink traf- 
fic was defeated by the "trade," and how, on the 
other hand, certain alleged economies in our schools, 
designed to save a few pounds at the cost of ef- 
ficiency, have been accepted with hardly a protest. 

If we wish to raise another generation that may 
benefit by the lessons we have learned and paid 



HOW I WOULD WORK FOR PEACE 827 

so dearly for, we must educate it, and education 
must be recognised as a necessity, something as 
necessary to us as the bread we eat, and more im- 
portant than professional politicians, public-houses, 
race-courses, theatres, and motor-cars; more vital 
to our welfare than all the amusements of the rich 
and the poor put together. 

Without education, the best ideas, the highest 
ideals must be lost and, as things are here, so they 
are elsewhere. In Europe the only belligerent coun- 
tries that have developed education all over their 
territory are France and Germany. In some of 
the other countries, the schoolmaster does not cover 
a tithe of the domain, and rulers do not wish to 
see the area of activity enlarged, partly because 
they understand it is easier to deceive, divide, and 
rule the ignorant, and partly because they know 
that the rank and file will not be able to keep pace 
with the enlightened intelligences to which the most 
restless elements in the State will be attracted. Au- 
tocratic rule cannot endure indefinitely in coun- 
tries where the proletariat has been to school, even 
military domination might in time be questioned. 

But what bearing has this upon world war? you 
may ask, and I reply that it has a considerable 
bearing upon the whole question, because the great 
majority of those who ensue peace are preaching 
just now to the converted. 



228 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Those who make the next war may be despotic 
or unconstitutional rulers, if Europe is of a mind 
to endure such people after this, but they will de- 
pend largely upon the uneducated classes, or upon 
an iron discipline that makes every man a slave 
of him who represents the State. Education is 
the one reliable antidote to absolute monarchy, and 
despite its complete failure in July and August, 
1914, I am still inclined to have faith in the In- 
ternational. It failed then, for each belligerent 
country called out that it was in danger, and in 
that hour when the social democracy might have 
saved Europe from the loss of millions of promis- 
ing lives, the savings of one generation and the 
progress of two, it failed. But nobody will recog- 
nise more completely than the social democrat the 
price of failure; he will see that democracy must 
be in future as independent of boundaries as is art 
or science. 

I believe that scores of men and women have 
the right peace methods, that there are many plans 
by which peace might be assured to the world, but 
no one of these can possibly become effective unless 
it can appeal to the men who constitute the rank 
and file of the world's armies, and to their wives 
and sweethearts. 

The only other way out of the tangle is for vic- 
tory to fall upon the side of those who are really 



HOW I WOULD WORK FOR PEACE 229 

concerned to keep the peace, and there is more 
than a little danger in this, for those who are con- 
cerned only with peace are apt to forget war al- 
together — to neglect necessary precautions, cut 
down reasonable expenditure, and in short, to give 
the war-loving, but weaker races, a chance of chal- 
lenging peace afresh. A union of the world's 
democracies is the cure for war, and this union is 
not possible until a certain standard of education 
has been reached by one and all. Only then will 
the man to whom fighting is the breath of life un- 
derstand that he must control his murderous in- 
stincts or perish by them. 

This war cost many years of preparation, part 
of it secret, and it is hard to see that peace can be 
more than a state of neutrality enforced by pov- 
erty and exhaustion. To make it abiding will 
need something more than the skill and cunning 
of diplomats, it will require the consent of the peo- 
ple themselves, and this they will give when they 
have knowledge, and not before. 

Educate! Use all the modern developments of 
our civilisation to that end. Let every child in 
Europe be taught to read and be supplied with 
books; let every new railway line be hailed as an 
ambassador of peace. Let interchange of visits be 
arranged between the workers of all countries, so 
that they may learn that antagonisms belong to 



230 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

their rulers and not to them.* It would be a fine 
thing to have a panacea that acted as quickly as 
quack medicines claim to act, but we all know that 
such cures do not exist. You cannot accomplish 
in a few months the work that thousands of years 
have left unfinished. After all that has been said, 
let us remember that war has been allowed to be 
the rule of life for countless generations. We in 
England have hardly suffered, the United States 
have kept free from actual invasion, but nearly all 
the other great Powers have known its horrors with- 
in the comparatively brief period of our lifetime. 

On the Continent, war is one of the incidents of 
normal life. Men are trained to take part in it as 
a completion of their education, women are en- 
couraged to applaud it as the source of all honours 
and distinction. England and America, the two 
least threatened countries, would hardly appear in 
a good light as peace propagandists on the Conti- 
nent, for war is received in a certain false perspec- 
tive there. Thousands glory in the thoughts of a 
campaign, proud to have taken part in one as our 
grandfathers were to empty two or three bottles 
at a sitting. This false perspective is the greatest 
danger we have to face in educating the people : it 

* A schoolmaster in Austria for saying as much as this was 
sentenced to several years' hard labour. 



HOW I WOULD WORK FOR PEACE 231 

must be destroyed before war will be seen as the 
thing it is. 

Human nature being hard to move, the work 
must progress slowly, but it is not the less worth 
undertaking on that account. Sane peace propa- 
ganda, accompanied by encouragement of physical 
fitness and explanation of the significance of life, 
need offend none, and will benefit all. 

The real facts of war must be within reach of 
everybody, the camera should preserve the records 
of trench, battlefield, and sacked town. Every city 
should engrave its list of dead where all may read, 
and in the cities that have suffered from invasion 
the full details of the horror should be preserved. 
The taxation that will grip Europe for many a 
year to come should always be associated with its 
prime cause, and every device should be sought to 
impress upon the children who will now be growing 
up into an impoverished world, the folly and help- 
lessness of their parents who were unable to keep 
what they had inherited, whether of freedom or 
worldly wealth. 

We who are middle-aged will be hardly called 
upon to see war again, the generation captured in 
its prime between the summers of 1914 and 1916, 
will have been ruined, the rule of the world will 
wait upon those who are just leaving school. 

Here the propagandists must work, and as there 



232 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

is hardly a big family in belligerent Europe that 
has not contributed life or fortune in some degree, 
the foundation for the work will stand prepared. 

If I were asked how to develop sane peace propa- 
ganda, I would call upon those who have gone 
through the war to tell the full story to those who 
have remained behind. All should unite to this 
end when war is over. Not only should the Eng- 
lishman tell of frozen trenches and waterless des- 
erts, but Germans and Austrians should tell of the 
retreat in Galicia and the advance to the marshes 
of Poland and Russia. The Servian retreat to 
Albania and the nameless horrors of Armenia 
should be recorded by survivors, women for choice, 
and men of all belligerent countries should speak of 
the horrors of the man-of-war that sinks blazing 
into the depths. 

The camera has a tale to tell of devastated coun- 
try-side and ruined city, of all the havoc and waste 
of war. Let that tale be told. 

Let the maimed, the crippled, the blind, the 
physically useless, come forward — our eyes will 
learn their lesson. 

Let the Churches speak, not at the bidding of 
authority, but in response to the plea of humanity. 

Let War, divorced from the physical training 
incumbent upon men and women alike, take its 
place by the side of cancer, cholera, and plague. 



HOW I WOULD WORK FOR FEACE 233 

Let the authorities tell us the loss of all com- 
munities in material wealth, and the eugenist speak 
of the blow to civilisation. 

Let all the accumulated facts be on record in 
every public library in the world, and let them be 
available even to the illiterate. 

Here, then, when the greatest of world-tragedies 
draws to its appointed close, is the means I would 
choose to render its repetition impossible, believing 
as I do that ignorance is the root from which all 
evil springs. 



XXIV 

LORD FRENCH 

My first meeting with Field-Marshal Viscount 
French, so long Commander-in-Chief of the "con- 
temptible little army" that has made history, dates 
back to the South African War. My latest meet- 
ing with him before he returned from France, was 
in August, 1914. On each occasion he was on the 
point of leaving for the front. 

In the wide space that separates the Boer War 
from the great international conflict, we met very 
often; he was frequently our guest, and we visited 
him at Government House, Aldershot. I have had 
many opportunities of hearing his views of the 
world problem that confronts us now, for he had 
seen it coming nearer and nearer, and had laboured 
night and day to meet it. Other men had doubts; 
he found no room for any. 

It was at Claridge's Hotel in town that we met 
during the Boer War. My eldest son, Guy, had 
then arrived at the ripe age of seventeen, and still 
at Eton, had sold all his personal effects, including 
his fur coat and jewellery given him by family and 

234 



LORD FRENCH 235 

friends, to provide himself with the means of get- 
ting to the front and equipping himself when there. 
We only learned his intentions when it was too late 
to stop them, and I do not think that either my hus- 
band or myself was really anxious to keep him from 
serving his country. The only difficulty was to 
find him something useful to do, and Sir John 
French offered to take him on his staff as galloper. 

I recall Lord French as I saw him at Claridge's — 
firm-mouthed, curt in manner, briefly incisive in 
speech, saying no more than was absolutely neces- 
sary, and looking at me with the curious glance that 
bespeaks the man of action who dreams and sees 
visions. A strong, resolute figure, with an iron will 
behind it, a human war machine in perfect order — 
that was my first impression. 

Many of my soldier friends were with him in 
South Africa, where his gifts as a cavalry leader 
roused enthusiasm. Writing home from the front, 
they told me he had but one fault as a commanding 
officer — he could not realise that horses do not re- 
spond as readily as soldiers to human emotions. 
He could overdrive his men, and they did their ut- 
most for him, as they did for another martinet, the 
late General Gatacre, because in each case they had 
implicit belief in their leader's direction and un- 
bounded faith in his skill, but he over-worked his 
horses, and kept the remount department in despair. 



236 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

He came back to England wearing all the laurels 
of a successful general, and I met him several times 
in town. "The dust of praise that is blown every- 
where" was no more to John French than any other 
dust. He brushed it sharply away, and devoted all 
his leisure to considering the problems of the in- 
evitable struggle with Germany. He believed then, 
with that curious gift of divination, that it must 
come, and he came near to fixing the date, for many 
years have passed since he assured me that it would 
not be later than 1915. 

When the Entente Cordiale was in the air and 
there was a chance that Great Britain and France 
would work side by side, he was delighted. Such 
an arrangement was for him an ideal one, and he 
was, I may say, one of the first, if not the very first, 
of our leading military men who showed a full ap- 
preciation of its value. Unfortunately, though a 
well-educated and, in a strictly professional sense, 
a deeply read man, he had no knowledge of the 
French language, and he could not rest until that 
defect was remedied. So in the Summer of 1906 — 
I think this was the year — he settled in the little vil- 
lage of La Boule, near Rouen, and lived for three 
months in absolute retirement, mastering the lan- 
guage. He would not claim to have acquired the 
Parisian accent, but he can at least speak fluently. 

We were motoring through France that summer 



LORD FRENCH 237 

and stayed in the little hotel he had chosen for his 
headquarters. He was extremely anxious to take 
me on a motor tour over the scene of Napoleon's 
last campaign, an ambition of long standing only 
now possible of fulfilment. We came very near to 
going with him, but unfortunately, something inter- 
vened. Even Lord French cannot make war any- 
thing but unspeakably horrible to me, but I am yet 
free to confess that his vast knowledge and soul- 
deep convictions make it fearfully interesting. 

We could not manage the motor tour, which 
would have covered Waterloo, but later, when in 
Paris, I was able to put his views before the then 
Premier, M. Clemenceau, whom I knew well. I 
had a very long and intimate conversation about 
the Entente with the "Tiger," as they called him in 
France, and I remember how he wheeled round in 
his chair and said to me in the frank, outspoken 
way that his opponents hate and fear, "Lady War- 
wick, the Entente is of no use to us unless your 
country can put 400,000 soldiers into France in 
the hour of need." I may remark that the French 
army was not then in its present state of efficiency. 

I pointed out that I was not in the confidence 
of our War Office, and that his application should 
be made to other quarters, and went on to ask him 
to meet General French to talk over the matters 
in question. "I'll do that with pleasure," said M. 



238 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Clemenceau. "I regard your General French as 
one of the few soldiers who understand military 
problems from their roots upwards." So the two 
men met, and I think they liked and respected one 
another. 

I remember reporting the gist of their conversa- 
tion in a long letter to King Edward, who in his 
reply told me his interest in the military side of 
the Entente had been greatly strengthened. In 
the following year several of the leading generals of 
France were invited over to attend the military 
manoeuvres and were the guests of Sir John and 
Lady French at Government House, Aldershot. I 
was asked to meet them, and heard at first hand 
the discussion of many difficulties that are staring 
us in the face as I write. I do not think I have 
ever had more occasion to be glad that I was taught 
some foreign languages properly. 

On his return to England Sir John French di- 
vided his work into sections. First and foremost 
came the German question, for he knew perfectly 
well, in the light of the ample information that came 
to him, how, sooner or later, Germany would fling 
down the gauntlet, perhaps before Europe, cer- 
tainly before Great Britain. His other task was 
concerned with the possible invasion of India by 
Russia. In early days he had seen service in India, 



LORD FRENCH 239 

and I have by me now a copy of his own plans for 
the defence of our great empire there. 

King Edward took Lord French with him when 
he went to meet the Czar at Reval, and this visit, 
at which the foundation of Anglo-Russian good- 
fellowship was laid, had a most reassuring effect 
upon his mind. Thereafter he devoted himself 
whole heartedly to the study of the Anglo- German 
danger. 

Taking for his motto the well-known maxim that 
it is allowable to learn even from an enemy — he 
adapted what he thought was best from the Ger- 
man methods, and it is well known that he and his 
close and trusted friend, Sir Douglas Haig, in 
making the British Army the perfect machine that 
it is, bore well in mind the lessons to be gathered 
from the German manoeuvres. 

He objected strongly to the German close forma- 
tion, holding it wasteful and unwise. He had 
grafted South African experience on his stock of 
tactical knowledge, and if the drilling of our men 
was terribly hard, he and Sir Douglas found the 
ripe fruits of it in that wonderful retreat from Mons 
and in the battles round Ypres. For German thor- 
oughness he had a generous and unstinted admira- 
tion. Prejudice can find no place in his mind. 

His prevision of the course of the present cam- 
paign startles me as I recall it now. He told me 



240 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

years ago much that has happened since the great- 
est world struggle of history began. 

A born soldier, he is merciless to the inefficient. 
He broke a high officer, who was also a personal 
friend, because that officer made a bad blunder. 
Private considerations were swept aside, as they 
always are with him. He spares nobody, least of 
all himself, but his men love him almost as much 
as they trust him, and he watches over their proper 
comforts with a jealous eye. They are the com- 
ponent parts of the war machine, and must be at 
their best. 

Lord French has not much in common with his 
gifted sister, Mrs. Despard, who was prominently 
before the public when the suffrage question came 
near to rivalling Home Rule in its claim on public 
attention, for Mrs. Despard's life is one of self- 
sacrifice to lighten the sorrows of others. But to 
one well acquainted with brother and sister, there 
are the qualities of calm resolution in the face of 
danger and of commanding will to be associated 
with each. 

I do not think he reads much, save books deal- 
ing with military questions. He does not hunt or 
shoot, or play polo or, indeed, acknowledge any 
form of sport. He stands professionally as far 
apart from the ordinary mundane interests of life 
as any professor in the cloistered peace of an old 



LORD FRENCH 241 

university town, and yet he is full to the brim of 
vitalising enthusiasms not to be overlooked by his 
friends because they are controlled. 

He lives in his profession and breathes the very 
air of it; soldiering claims his every thought, and 
yet he is in no aspect the "beau sabreur" of the 
Ouida novels. If you were to drive with him 
through the most exquisite landscape, his mind's 
eye would at once select the salient points of at- 
tack and defence, he would grasp every military 
possibility of what lay before him, but the sur- 
rounding beauty would pass him by. Sometimes 
we have talked of war. "I hate war as much as 
you do," he has said to me more than once, 

"but " There it ends, and he is looking with 

far-seeing eyes at encounters yet to be. 

In the conventional sense he has no religion, and 
yet I regard him as one of the most religious men 
I know. His views of the hereafter are clear; he 
is confidently assured of the soul's survival, its re- 
incarnation, the fulfilment of its ambitions. He 
is an idealist, an enthusiast, a man who could not 
act dishonestly if he tried, faithful to the bitter end 
to those in whom he trusts. 

Much of the recent gossip in London has en- 
deavoured to suggest that he has been a party to 
the intrigues of others. I venture to say that no- 
body who understands Lord French could make 



242 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

such a foolish mistake. The personal interests and 
trickery of small natures have no meaning for 
him. First and last and all the time he is a sol- 
dier, probably the one soldier who could have over- 
come the enormous difficulties by which he has 
been faced. He is the type of the leader of men, 
an example of the power of concentration driving 
a single purpose to its end. I think Frederick the 
Great would have made much of him and that his 
chief hero in a military sense, the first Napoleon, 
would have kept him by his side. 

He has been sorely tried. It is to be hoped that 
Sir Douglas Haig, who in a military sense is his 
creation, will realise his teacher's dreams and am- 
bitions. 



XXV 

lord haldane: some recollections and an 
estimate 

In the library this morning I came by chance upon 
a book that should not have been there — a "Life 
of Lassalle" that Lord Haldane lent me some years 
ago, and which I had forgotten to return. It 
chanced that within the hour I had thrown aside in 
disgust the Tory daily paper that held a vulgar and 
rancorous attack upon the Ex- War Minister. Per- 
haps it was the coincidence that set me thinking. 

My mind travelled back to the day not so many 
years ago — King Edward had lately ascended the 
throne — when I met Lord Haldane for the first 
time. It was at Dalmeny, Lord Rosebery's home 
on the Firth of Forth. I forget who was of the 
party, at least I can remember only Winston 
Churchill, then coming under our host's political 
influence. My first recollection of Mr. Haldane 
as he was in those days was meeting him in the 
Library. He was busy arranging his host's treas- 
ures to the best advantage and was very little con- 
cerned with the house party's social side. He would 

243 



244 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

appear at table, create an immediate impression 
by reason of his illuminating conversation, and, the 
meal taken, would slip back again to his beloved 
books. I carried away from Dalmeny the impres- 
sion of one of the most interesting men I had ever 
met — a man with massive head, twinkling eye and 
witty speech that stimulated all and hurt none. 
He was that vara avis a lawyer without guile, a 
philosopher untainted by the Courts. We met 
again, and again I was immensely attracted by his 
personality. In the world we met in, men and 
women were seeking success of some sort all the 
time. Wealth, prestige, political power, social in- 
fluence, whatever our weakness it rose to the sur- 
face like a cork. Of all these things Mr. Haldane 
seemed supremely unconscious, he swam through 
the social waters like a kindly triton among min- 
nows. Even in those days he had long been a de- 
vout student and an ardent admirer of what was 
best in Germany, and I think it was because I too 
was interested in the marvellous progress of that 
Empire that we found something in common. And 
he lent me the "Life of Lassalle," the book that lies 
before me as I write. 

I have sincere belief in the intuitive perception 
of women. I believe that their instinct is stronger 
than their reasoning faculty, and that in the great 
majority of cases they are justified in their belief, 



LORD HALDANE 245 

even if they call it a prejudice. From the begin- 
ning of our acquaintance it seemed to me that Lord 
Haldane would in any large affairs of life be mis- 
judged by his countrymen. In the first place he 
is a great intellect, and as a nation we hold all 
knowledge suspect. Secondly, he lacked the proper 
qualifications of the parliamentarian: he had noth- 
ing of the divine gift of push. He did not enjoy 
the limelight, and as for advertising himself, I 
think he would not have known how to begin. I 
do not believe he ever wished to enter the political 
arena, he never was a politician in the party sense, 
but he succumbed to the influence of Lord Rose- 
bery and Mr. Asquith who saw that so great an 
intelligence would be of infinite value to the Lib- 
eral party. To me it always seemed a pity to drag 
the kindly philosopher from his study and to bring 
him upon the shabby stage whereon the tragi-com- 
edy of party politics is played for the bemusement 
of the general public. Perhaps Lord Haldane's 
long and intimate study of the best side of Ger- 
man life led the Liberal leaders to believe that he 
would be persona grata in circles that could curb the 
worst. Perhaps they too were fascinated by the 
breadth of his views, the range of his knowledge, 
the serenity of his outlook, and the clarity of his 
judgments. There is no doubt that he used all his 
powers to come to such a friendly arrangement with 



M6 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

Germany as could be reached without detriment to 
any of the interests of our friends and allies in Eu- 
rope. There is no doubt that he was face to face for 
years with the conditions that reached their climax 
in July, 1914, and that he did all that was possible 
to preserve peace while preparing for the defence 
of the country. 

Our Tories demanded a scapegoat; the Lillipu- 
tians of Westminster and Fleet Street have flung a 
thousand venomed darts at Gulliver. I am grate- 
ful to think that I know the real man whose aspect 
they have succeeded for a little while in distorting. 
Quite steadfastly he opposed German militarism, 
quite hopefully he clung to the belief that he would 
succeed in his great quest of peace. Perhaps he 
was too confident. Perhaps he underrated the 
forces that were opposed to him not only abroad 
but at home. 

We are too near the history of our own time to 
tell, but I remember one incident that revealed to 
me the seriousness of the struggle in which he was 
engaged. There was a meeting to develop the Ter- 
ritorial movement in the county town, and I found 
myself sitting by his side at the luncheon. Fol- 
lowing it he made one of the most stimulating 
speeches I have ever listened to, appealing to terri- 
torials to come forward and prepare themselves to 
help their country. For simple direct eloquence, 



LORD HALDANE 247 

for a call to the highest and noblest feelings without 
one vulgar thought or unworthy expression, I have 
never heard a speech to equal it. Only a great 
statesman and a man full of the loftiest patriotism 
could have spoken as he spoke. Those who are well 
informed know what we owe to the system of train- 
ing devised by this lawyer-philosopher and how 
wonderfully it has borne expansion to meet the sud- 
den needs. His critics have never paused to re- 
member that he was a loyal member of a Cabinet 
that imposed its collective will upon the people; 
they have not realised how largely the decisions 
of the Foreign Office would have availed to control 
his own views. It is so easy to say that, rather than 
submit to any reduction of our forces he should have 
resigned. Those who know Lord Haldane are well 
aware that pride of place would never have kept 
him in an office that absorbed all his leisure. 
Thoughtful people will realise that one of the ten- 
ets held by a loyal Cabinet minister is subordination 
of personal views to the collective views of the min- 
istry. If every man who could not follow his chief 
along a given road were to resign he would not only 
lose all chance of giving effect to his purposes but 
he would make Cabinet rule an impossibility. 

While preparing the country for defence, Lord 
Haldane had to fight the militarism that has at last 
run wild through Europe ; while providing for the 



248 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

worst, he had, in the highest interests of his coun- 
trymen, to seek the best and, if possible, to ensue 
it. His Territorial scheme was countered from first 
to last by the conscriptionists, they sought by every 
overt and covert act to render all his efforts nuga- 
tory. I venture to say, not without sound knowl- 
edge, that he occupied a position of hideous respon- 
sibility with a measure of courage, fortitude and al- 
truism to which those who are best qualified to judge 
will always pay tribute. One thing he would not do. 
He would not descend into the arena of sordid con- 
troversy to gladden the hearts and stimulate the 
conceit of petty politicians. If he failed, he was 
a glorious failure; but I venture to say that when 
the impartial historian, depending on knowledge to 
which the general public cannot yet gain access, 
surveys the years that led to destruction, he will 
rescue Lord Haldane's name and fame from the 
accumulation of dirt and rubbish that have been 
heaped upon it by men whom none will desire to 
remember. 

I regard it as a great privilege to know the real 
man and to lay my little tribute before him, though 
to one so amply dowered with the hate and scorn of 
scorn, defenders against such imputations as have 
been levelled at him may well be superfluous. But 
I owe a great debt to his master mind. Of all the 



LORD HALDANE 249 

distinguished men I have been privileged to meet 
none has had higher qualities of heart and brain, and 
it seems to me that this is the season in which such 
a debt should be acknowledged. 



XXVI 

GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM 

Those of us who find in the stress and storm 
through which the world is passing an irresistible 
appeal for strenuous action and clear thought, must 
realise the dangerous tendencies of the time, but 
it is not right to look upon them as the sum-total 
of the present upheaval. The present has its trage- 
dies that pierce to the heart of our normal self- 
restraint ; we have to think of the future as well and 
see whether there is at our door any indication of 
the unity and brotherhood for which millions have 
waged a war from which many of the best and brav- 
est will never return. Is there any indication that 
in the times lying before us, all classes of the com- 
munity will unite to share the burdens of the State? 
I think there is. 

In many directions the lessons of life and death 
are not yet learned, but there is one feature of our 
social life that is truly encouraging. To sum it 
up in a phrase I would say that people whose 
example is a considerable force in the national life, 
have decided that it is neither a vice nor a crime 

250 



GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM 251 

to be poor. A modest establishment in England 
to-day is more fashionable than an extravagant one ; 
those of us who are burdened by very large places 
are the objects of sympathy rather than envy. 

The flunkey has been redeemed from base servi- 
tude, never again I hope and believe, to return. The 
descendant of Jeames de la Pluche, immortalised 
by Thackeray, is with the British Expeditionary 
Force or qualifying to go there. He has discov- 
ered that he too is a man. The butler, where he 
still lingers, is too old for service, the footmen, if 
any, have been rejected by the army doctor, or have 
played a part and returned home wounded and unfit 
as yet for a more strenuous life. They do not pro- 
pose to remain in a discredited service. Even the 
maid-servants are reduced to the minimum that is 
compatible with a fair day's necessary work. The 
lady's-maid, that last infirmity of conscientious 
minds, is allowed ample time for helping the nation. 
The cook gives the benefit of her skill not only to 
the home but the hospital. The sons of the house 
are at the front if they are old enough and not too 
old to be of use, the daughters have found some- 
thing better than they had imagined possible to 
do with their time. They have flung themselves as 
far in the pursuit of duty as they travelled formerly 
in the pursuit of pleasure. 

If one entertains nowadays, it is the working 



252 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

party or the committee of which one is a member 
that is received. Simplicity is the order of the hour 
among friends and one does not entertain acquaint- 
ances. The young men have gone from stables and 
garage, from woods and garden. I think the ex- 
pensive dressmakers, jewellers, restaurateurs, hair- 
dressers, and the rest of those who catered for the 
days of our vanity, are having a bad time. I think 
they will see a worse one. There are still thought- 
less women in our midst. I recognise them at once, 
for they clothe themselves in the furs of harmless 
animals and wear hats decked with the bodies or 
nuptial plumage of innocent birds, as if pride of 
power, vanity, and lust of slaughter had not brought 
enough injury to the world and vanity must still 
take toll of life. But these women are a minority 
and belong to the class that nothing short of ostra- 
cism can reach. I think it will reach them, and soon. 
There has been such an orgie of cruelty in the 
world of late that the period to be put upon it 
must be a full one. 

The special interest in the changes briefly out- 
lined above, and the list might be continued indefi- 
nitely, lies in the approximation at home to the 
conditions in the field of war. There the struggle 
for mastery is tending, on every front, to the ob- 
literation of class distinctions. Many of these that 
in the days before August, 1914, were rigid as 



GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM 253 

Hindu caste are now dead as well as damned. Man- 
kind has recognised something of its essential broth- 
erhood out there, and now womankind's sisterhood 
is recognised too. This is almost the more impor- 
tant change, because so many men who remain in 
England waging the money war that is ever with 
us are far too immersed in the pursuit of pelf to care 
about anything else. Against them even our de- 
fenders might fail in times of peace if they were 
left unaided by the other sex. Women have al- 
ways been the creators and supporters of extrava- 
gance, though the fault rests with the men who have 
until quite recent times refused to allow them any 
interests that will vie with money-spending and 
aimless pleasure-seeking. I do not think that even 
this war could have brought about the change I rec- 
ognise so gladly and record with so much pleasure, 
had it not been for the feminist movement. This 
taught tens of thousands of women to think and 
thousands to make their thoughts articulate. War 
faced them with a sense of the value of the work 
they had undertaken, the urgent need of its pur- 
suit in the interests of the world at large. I feel 
it is in no small part due to their influence that so 
much that is unworthy in the life of the modern 
woman has been voluntarily laid aside and that so 
much of infinite value has been chosen to replace it. 
Just as men have mingled on the battlefield, 



254 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

women have mingled at home, understanding per- 
haps for the first time in our social history the view- 
point of classes other than their own, seeing the 
best in each other's lives and sharing anxieties and 
burdens as perhaps only women can. But if the 
good understanding was to be permanent it was 
essential that privilege should be laid aside. Peo- 
ple can enjoy riches without a thought and suffer 
poverty without a murmur, but contrasts build 
barriers. It is the sense of sharp contrast that is 
the undoing of so many girls, that makes for so 
much bitterness among women. All too often the 
rich do not understand, the poor are painfully sus- 
picious or self-conscious. There could not be any 
common meeting ground until all were rich or all 
were poor. It is not possible under existing social 
conditions — soon one hopes to be amended — for all 
to live in comfort. Thank God, it is at least pos- 
sible for all to be poor. 

Not by what we have, but by what we are, let 
us be judged, and for those who had great posses- 
sions there will be a certain satisfaction in the new 
conditions that money could not purchase. 

Flattery, adulation, jealousy, envy, malice and 
all uncharitableness could be provoked by wealth 
even though it was wisely dispensed ; gratitude was 
always hard to gain in the genuine form. Love, 
affection, simple unaffected candour, these were 



GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM 255 

rarely vouchsafed to those whose material prosper- 
ity was considerable. It is intolerable that one 
should patronise or endure patronage, frank and 
simple relations cannot endure in an atmosphere of 
inequalities. In England the infection of snobbery 
was eating into our national life. A considerable 
section of the press caters for snobs and thrives in 
the catering. In the United States and in the 
British Dominions Overseas the state of the public 
mind is far healthier. It may be that our plight 
had come about through our insularity, by reason 
of our super-abundant national riches, by the force 
of our habit of despising the creator of national 
wealth and honouring only those who squander it. 
Whatever the cause the effect was ugly. War has 
taken drastic steps to abate the evil by depriving of 
their locus standi those who stood for great posses- 
sions. They are poorer and better. We shall have 
a certain number of plutocrats in our midst ; out of 
a war expenditure of four or five millions a day 
somebody must make money. But the money 
spinners will find that while the hand of the State 
will weigh heavily upon them, any lavish expendi- 
ture will be eyed askance by the moderate-minded 
men and women of all classes. The eyes of the 
majority are opened. Above all, English women 
of the leisured classes have deliberately laid aside 
many of the habits and indulgences to which their 



256 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

practice gave a sanction. This tendency is still in 
its infancy, but the tragedy of war has enforced and 
will continue to enforce it. All, or at least the 
greater part of Europe, after this war will be a 
house of mourning. Death leads the van of a pro- 
cession in which Poverty brings up the rear. As in 
a flash the world that lived almost without a serious 
care two years ago sees its own real needs and duties 
and the terrible inadequacy of the means to fulfil 
and perform them. 

We find to-day that our national needs are 
greater than we knew, our resources less than they 
have been for many years. The only true satis- 
faction to be gathered from the prospect is that we 
recognise it. For once in our history it is not left 
to a few courageous men to preach an unpopular 
gospel in the ears of indifferent wealth and vanity- 
stricken fashion. The people who are alive to the 
truth of our national state are not devoting anxious 
hours to keeping up appearances. Shams that 
our life seemed full of so recently, are known for 
what they are. For the first time in the social his- 
tory of our generation it suffices to be an English- 
man or an Englishwoman and to have filled the 
role, however modest, that the fates have assigned 
in this world crisis. Shall we miss the old luxuries 
of life? Will those of us who accepted them with- 
out thought or comment as part of the natural 



GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM 257 

order of things, forego them without a qualm? I 
think we shall, because we shall all have a serious 
and definite occupation. The landowner must de- 
velop a good business faculty or go under, the mis- 
tress of a large establishment must learn all the 
domestic arts that her grandmothers practised to 
perfection or she will not be able to keep it to- 
gether. The younger sons will not be brought up 
to look upon loafing as a career, and the girls will 
be trained to take a part in the world's work, forti- 
fied by the knowledge that the State no longer re- 
gards them as a negligible quantity. In the near 
future the British Empire will be demanding more 
of its sons and daughters and giving them less re- 
ward for it, but such a condition encourages the 
national virtues. We are rather a flint-like people. 
If we are properly struck we emit light. 

Decidedly the world is out of joint, and it is 
possible to survey the situation and find ample 
material for pessimism. But we who have made 
the mistakes or inherited them can set the crooked 
straight if we recognise the nature of the task. 
And I see on all sides of me men and women who 
do. They are preparing the ground on which the 
virtues engendered by a struggle for national ex- 
istence may blossom and bear fruit. 



XXVII 

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN PEACE AND WAR 

The Anglo-Saxon race is on its trial just now, and, 
however strenuous the times, they do not deny us 
a measure of leisure in which to estimate the forces 
upon which we may rely. With battleships and 
regiments woman has nothing to do, she does but 
bring painfully into the world those who serve 
both. It is her mission to shield them with her 
love and devotion in the season of their helpless- 
ness and wait, watch, and pray while the battles 
join. Hers too it is to do what may be done to 
heal the wounds of battle, to comfort and to min- 
ister, to know the anxiety without the excitement of 
conflict, to see much of the horror and little of 
the glory. Yet, far outside the area of strife, 
woman plays no negligible part in controlling the 
destinies of nations, for there is a field of social 
diplomacy in which she labours persistently and the 
measure of Anglo-Saxon unity that obtains to-day 
is in no small measure the fruit of her effort. 

It will be remembered that before there was an 
Anglo-American social life, relations between the 

258 



ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 259 

mother country and the United States were the 
reverse of cordial. Many people in the States re- 
garded this country with suspicion, many in this 
country looked upon the States with the contempt 
born of ignorance. Emerson, James Russell Low- 
ell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others helped 
Englishmen to understand Americans, but per- 
haps the best work was done by women. As soon as 
they began to understand one another the diver- 
gent standpoints were brought into line, old preju- 
dices were seen to lie no deeper than the surface 
of things. The freshness and vigour of American 
manhood, the honest, unconventional outlook of the 
country's womanhood were instantly recognised 
when social intercourse had been established and 
visitors from the States began to realise that in 
coming to England they were but returning to the 
land of their fathers. Mistakes are not immortal. 
The worst blunderer of a hundred years ago and 
the people who suffered most by the blunders have 
long been one in the dust to which all that is mortal 
of us must return. Latent and underlying sympa- 
thies have declared themselves. For thirty years I 
have watched the slow conquest of prejudice, the 
steady discovery of points of sympathy, the dis- 
missal of the old stereotyped ideas that made for 
antagonism. To-day, when we are fighting for our 
life against a Power that has sworn to dominate 



260 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

civilisation or perish in the attempt, we find our- 
selves rich in the sympathy and moral support of 
all the North American continent, not only the 
British born of Canada are with us, but in the 
United States, despite the multitude of foreign in- 
fluences and the great admixture of interests the 
general tone is manifestly sympathetic. The Ger- 
man menace has stirred Anglo-Saxon blood 
throughout the whole world. The observance of a 
strict and proper neutrality is no bar to American 
goodwill, our cousins know that this struggle has 
been forced upon us and that we would have avoided 
it had not honour forbade. 

In the brief intervals of the work of organising 
the woman's service in my native county of Essex 
I have been trying to estimate the forces that have 
brought the changed conditions about, and I think 
I can see most of them. I have met most if not all 
the leading men and women of America, both in 
their own country and here, and no subject has 
been more completely canvassed in our conversa- 
tions than the future that the Anglo-Saxon race 
may hope to share. My views, right or wrong, 
are my own, and I ask nobody to accept any re- 
sponsibility for them ; if they are correct they should 
help to explain the present and to indicate lines that 
the future may follow. 

First and foremost among the forces that have 



ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 261 

improved Anglo-American relations I place the 
Anglo-American marriages that should go far to 
improve not only the finances but the breed of our 
English aristocracy. Byron writes of mixed mar- 
riages that they "ruin the blood but much improve 
the breed." I accept only the latter proposition. 
I think the young generation born of these mar- 
riages will be powerful, mentally and physically, 
that it may even be in time to stand in the breach 
and save the class to which it will belong from sub- 
mersion. Certainly our aristocracy, enfeebled by 
intermarriage and circumscribed financially by mod- 
ern taxation and the depreciation in agricultural 
values, degraded by the sale of "honours," would 
be bound to go under in the struggle with democ- 
racy, and if it is possible to predicate any of the 
results of the present cataclysm I should say that 
the democracy will issue from it as the dominating 
force in Europe. Another section of a royalty that 
tends ever to diminish has been weighed in the bal- 
ances of war and will, I imagine, be found want- 
ing. 

Anglo-American marriages have given our cou- 
sins of the New World an interest in the old firm's 
business, have made them, even if in a limited sense, 
partners in the British Empire unlimited. I said 
as much at the dinner-table the other night and was 
promptly challenged until I reminded my critic 



262 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

that an ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, to whose 
genius all, including Lord Charles Beresford, now 
pay tribute, is as much American as English. Miss 
Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was one of the 
first recruits to the ranks of the British aristocracy 
and has played no small part in English social life. 
Winston Churchill has had time to grow up, there 
are dozens of Anglo-American lads to whom in the 
course of time opportunity will be given. Who 
shall say that they too will not prove worthy? 

The American girl, married into the wide circle 
of Britain's comfortable classes, finds many inter- 
ests that unite the country of her adoption with the 
land of her birth. Visited by her family and friends, 
giving introductions for use in the United States 
to her husband's relatives, she has been powerful 
in spreading social intercourse and in establishing 
the vital truth that, in face of many of the great 
world problems, England and America see eye to 
eye and may work hand in hand. Philanthropy and 
social service are the finest solvents of prejudice 
between people speaking one language and, when 
that prejudice is not founded on fundamental dis- 
agreement, and is dependent for its maintenance 
upon ignorance, suspicion and the absence of inter- 
course, it cannot long survive under modern condi- 
tions. Every Atlantic Liner is a missionary of 
Anglo-American good-will. London and New 



ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 263 

York can exchange their thoughts in a few mo- 
ments, the great sundering force of the Atlantic 
grows ever less, and the American girl has played a 
part in unifying Anglo-Saxon thought and sym- 
pathy that makes her social reward seem but a small 
payment for a great service. 

Perhaps the great antagonising force in America 
has been the Irishman. Our administration of the 
Sister Island has left scars that had been past heal- 
ing but for Mr. Gladstone and his successors in the 
office of Liberalism. Happily to-day we stand 
upon the brink of wiser times, a sane policy has 
promised to realise the national ambitions of Ire- 
land and a grave danger has united in resistance to 
foreign aggression the two antagonistic camps. 
They will meet in the service of a common cause, 
they will face danger side by side, happily they 
may learn the full lesson of toleration and mutual 
respect. It is better I think, much as I hate war, 
that a thousand Home Rulers and Ulstermen 
should fall side by side resisting foreign aggression 
than that fifty should fall in civil strife each by 
the other's hands. The effect in America of Home 
Rule, and a union of hearts and hands in the 
national defence, cannot but be significant. The 
powerful Irish contingent, as generous as it is 
quick to anger, almost as prompt to forgive an 
injury for which atonement has been made as to 



264 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

resent one that is not repaired, will cease to be a 
hostile factor. Conscious that the old country has 
done its best to right a grave and lasting wrong, it 
will forget, as the American born citizen is for- 
getting, the days of Lords North and Castlereagh. 
All these quarrels, however serious, have been 
family quarrels, in the face of foreign aggression 
the old wounds are healed. I was struck by the 
splendid action of all parties to the labour disputes 
when war broke out. In twenty-four hours there 
were no disputants. 

To-day the Anglo-American influences at which 
I have hinted find no opposing factors in their 
path. Good will is well-nigh universal, moral 
support and encouragement are freely ours at 
this grave moment when we stand so much in 
need of them. I have always thought, when I 
have been in America and when I have been enter- 
tained by or have entertained Americans at home, 
that there is a little feeling of pride in the old 
country. If our short-sighted policy of the third 
Georgian era turned friends to foes we have paid 
the price in full and to-day the Anglo-American 
marriages are giving our trans- Atlantic cousins 
the material for a noble revenge. They are 
coming to the relief of the class that persecuted 
them of old time, renewing its blood, refilling its 
coffers and preparing through it to administer the 



ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 265 

world's greatest Empire. It is no unworthy 
ambition that animates the American girl to-day 
when she quits the land of her fathers for the 
land of her grandparents and their forebears, and 
she has shown herself well able to fulfil it. 
The pages of Debrett bear witness to what she 
has done, while those who have been brought 
into constant and intimate association with her 
realise that she has shown exceptional capacity 
in adapting herself to the new environment, in 
mastering the rather formidable etiquette, in 
modifying old points of view, and in fitting herself 
to fill the rather exacting role she has undertaken. 

When I look round social London and see the 
many-sided work of the American women I feel 
that they will cover the whole ground. Their 
energy and resource are admirable and many of 
their houses are centres of philanthropic as well 
as social life. Think of the reflex action of all 
this energy in the States, think of the tens of thou- 
sands of American visitors to London in the course 
of the year and of the hundreds who see English 
social life as it is and partake of it, and the sym- 
pathy and understanding that are ours to-day can 
be accounted for and understood. 

I have long been cognisant of the two great 
forces that were working, side by side though in- 
dependently, to destroy Anglo-American friend- 



266 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

ship. The first was Irish- American resentment, a 
perfectly natural expression of feeling. Home 
Rule for Ireland was the only possible permanent 
cure, and the time for palliatives has long passed. 
With the coming of the cure we may look for the 
end of the complaint. The other force was more 
subtle, and was founded upon the presence in the 
States of tens of thousands of the Kaiser's subjects. 
They have carried across the Atlantic their old 
mischievous motto, "Deutschland iiber Alles," and 
have lost no opportunity of giving it effect. A 
powerful press, a great financial group, direct 
encouragement from the Kaiser, whose policy — a 
relic of Bismarck's day — was to sow ill-will between 
Great Britain and the United States under all 
circumstances, have been their weapons. To 
conciliate the States, to flatter them, to suggest 
that they needed German help against British 
intrigue, to show their leading representatives 
every courtesy, even to affect a sympathy with 
democracy, all this was the part of a settled pro- 
gramme. It lacked nothing but success. 

This is not the time to go into details of de- 
liberate attempts made to undermine Anglo- 
American good will. On a more fitting occasion I 
may reveal some. At the moment it does not 
seem right to increase the prevailing bitterness, 
but I may say that many social intrigues have 



ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 267 

come to my own notice and have left me wondering 
at Teuton pertinacity, at the persistence with which 
large and small matters alike are pursued, and at 
the curious psychological failing that nearly always 
loses count of the human element. Theoretically, 
logically perhaps, the German advances should 
have been entirely successful. Unhappily for the 
Kaiser's ambitions, it was always fairly obvious 
that behind every courtesy, however extravagant, 
behind every diplomatic action, however grave 
or trivial, there lay an Anglophobe bias. It was 
not perhaps always conscious to its originators; 
the state of mind towards Great Britain in 
Germany is largely inherited, and I sometimes 
think it is well-nigh sub-conscious. Indeed, I 
would venture the proposition that it is more ob- 
vious to an American than it is to the German 
possessors of it. The United States is of course 
the world's melting pot; happily for us, and I 
think for the world at large, the Anglo-Saxon 
element is dominant. In such an environment 
Anglophobia cannot thrive, and I think the 
Kaiser's representatives have mistaken the actual- 
ities of the situation. Anglo-American squabbles 
are the little family quarrels with which we are all 
familiar; if one were to come from the outside 
and seek to take part in them, he would soon learn 
that such an intrusion was unwarranted and un- 



268 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

welcome. Instead of extending the area of the 
original quarrel it would reduce it to vanishing 
point. In Anglo-American relations the Kaiser 
must remain an "outsider," accepted while he be- 
haves himself, but known all the time for the rep- 
resentative of a proud, powerful nation that is 
avid of world power and will shrink from no effort 
to obtain it, a nation that, if it is to be judged by 
its rulers, holds that the result justifies the cause, 
and that kindness, deceit, generosity, cajolery, 
persuasion, threats, candour, and deceit are all 
weapons that find a proper place in the armoury 
of a subtle diplomacy and may be called upon 
in turn. There is a world in which this standard 
of things passes current, the world of the com- 
pany promoter, the international financier, the 
Jesuit who holds that the end justifies if it can- 
not sanctify. On the other hand, all these mental 
processes are abhorrent to the Anglo-Saxon. He 
is by nature plain and blunt, subtleties are for- 
eign to him. It is his ambition to play the game, 
and he requires the game to be clean that it may 
be worth the playing. He likes to place his cards 
on the table, you will not find them in his sleeve or 
his boot. We know that the sowing of mistrust 
between the United States and Great Britain has 
been one of the chief pre-occupations of German 
diplomacy, we know too that it has failed as signally 



ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 269 

as the early and vital attacks upon the Liege forts 
failed. To accomplish its destiny the Anglo-Saxon 
race must stand together. We need not interfere 
in each other's quarrels, we need not model our lives 
to a pattern that is not sanctified by use and cus- 
tom, but we will not allow any other nation to 
come between us and our friendship, or to inter- 
fere with that slow, sure growth of understand- 
ing and good feeling that may bring to generations 
unborn the blessing of universal good-fellowship 
and peace. 

In all human probability the Teuton has post- 
poned his own day for generations. The triumphs 
of more than forty years of peaceful progress have 
been bartered and have been used as gambling 
counters, and I believe that a double menace is 
now in slow course of removal, first from this little 
island whose sons and great grandsons in their 
millions are looking, anxious to see how we acquit 
ourselves, and from those South American Re- 
publics that purpose by grace of Providence to 
work out their own salvation without either the 
help or the permission of the Kaiser and his legions. 
When we have succeeded in our present struggle — 
I do not admit the possibility of a doubt about the 
issue — the way will be open for the triumphs of 
peace and for the passing of armaments and 
tyrannies. Surely in these great changes so long 



270 A WOMAN AND THE WAR 

looked for, so eagerly anticipated on both sides of 
the Atlantic, the whole voice of the United Anglo- 
Saxon Race will speak in unison. I believe we 
shall play no small part in the re-shaping and re- 
building of a shattered and exhausted world, and 
that the genuine friendliness of our relations will 
make the task as pleasant as it is responsible. 
Side by side we have sought peace and ensued it, 
the overwhelming tragedy may have shown that 
"man is one and the Fates are three," but it will 
not alter our national and racial belief that we 
must develop the tranquillity of the world, that 
we must develop the arts of peace and arm for 
defence rather than defiance. Through the gloom 
and murk of the present hour I find myself looking 
with assured confidence to the world's future, and 
whatever the Vision I see the whole Anglo-Saxon 
race massing irresistible forces for the service of 
the world. 



^ H 52-79 









.0'' 













, 4> c o - o , <6 0* • * ' * * O j> o • " • » ^ 







°^ * ° " ° " A U 




4 CU 
<^ -^ 

• ' 1 AT %> ° " ° A* 

V * s VI 

" Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

n Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: uty oflftf 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1606S 
(724)779-2111 



,-yny^^ <{-- 



<X 



O *o . » 
























r.«* .G* ^O -o.>< A. 





4 <^ 







^*** 









